Inference in Archaeology

Abstract

The science of archaeology is based on a multi-leveled interdisciplinary system of descriptions, laws, and explanations. Archaeologists try to provide systemic descriptions and to confirm hypotheses about past social structures on the assumption that they are represented by selected parts of extant material remains. Inferences are about and based on processes and relations among social structure, material culture, and its unaltered, altered, and selected remains. Archaeological inference depends on principles of cultural behavior, the accumulation and alteration of material, and archaeologists' methods. These physico-chemical, geological, biological, psychological, sociological, anthropological, and methodological principles derive from the present behavior of men and material.

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