Skepticism about the archaeological past

Archaeologists have debated a remarkably consistent core of issues since the turn of the century. In 1913, for example, Roland B. Dixon inveighed against research that showed “too little indication of a reasoned formulation of definite problems” and an inexcusable “neglect of saner and more truly scientific methods” (1913: 563); “the time is past,” he insisted, “when our major interest was in the specimen … We are today concerned with the relations of things, with the whens and the whys and the hows” (1913: 565). The problems he recommended for archaeologists' consideration had to do with “the development of culture in general,” with what he described as cultural processes, and the scientific methods he recommended were explicitly those of hypothesis testing: archaeologists should proceed by formulating “a working hypothesis, or several hypotheses” and then seeking material that might fill available gaps and “prove or disprove” them (1913: 564). Four years later, Wissler advocated a very similar (problem–oriented, hypothesis–testing) program, and explicitly aligned it with anthropology; he described it as “the real, or new archaeology” (the article was entitled “The New Archaeology”).