Abstract
The article addresses the methodological debate within archaeology over its self-understanding and cognitive profile. Is archaeology an interpretative humanities discipline or rather a natural science? More specifically, should it view the human past as an expression of (series of) essentially symbolic human strivings or should it rather turn to the exact sciences for a model? The paper portrays inquiry in general and in archaeology specifically in terms of questions and answers. The fundamental idea is that the big research questions proposed by archaeologists fall squarely within the humanities. However, when searching for answers it uses an increasingly wide variety of methods, models and tools from the natural sciences. The paper also addresses fundamental epistemological, methodological and ontological issues over the credentials and nature of our knowledge of the past. How do archaeologists who are often inclined to adopt a realist stance towards the human past deal with the variety of constructivist challenges? How do values and non-epistemic considerations enter the scene? To count as a respectable science is archaeology forced to maintain that facts should be allowed to speak for themselves? And what can and should count as a fact? What would it mean to make things talk? The article ends with a brief note on the nature of archaeology as a discipline or interdiscipline, and on how it aspires to go beyond brute physical and behavioral facts.
