Making Good Arguments in Archaeology

Abstract

This chapter reviews epistemological and methodological issues of argumentation in archaeology. It begins with historical reasons for the lack of attention to argumentation in recent decades. Next, it reviews the status of archaeological argumentation as set out in a 2015 paper (Smith, 2015b). This is followed by an expansion of this line of thought based on a methodological approach initiated by Stephen Toulmin in 1958. Toulmin’s scheme is based on visual diagrams to show the sequential steps in an argument. It is a particularly helpful method to show the difference between strong and weak archaeological arguments about the past. I examine four archaeological arguments, and use Toulmin’s method to assess their strength. The final topic is an examination of archaeological modeling as a form of argument.

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