ABSTRACT
The respective methodologies employed by social anthropology and archaeology, their approaches to data, teaching, and dissemination, are all markedly different. Taken cumulatively, they appear at least to give a level of precision that may even become the envy of social anthropologists, even though they have the advantage of being able to talk with their subjects. This advance in scientific archaeology has occurred alongside, even slightly following, the discipline’s partial reconciliation with social anthropology. Archaeology, over a slightly longer time frame, moved in exactly the opposite direction. Archaeology and social anthropology, though they can be and were long taught together successfully, may also metamorphose into differing intellectual paths, which may or may not result in separation. Social anthropology, in order to move closer to archaeology, equally would have to adapt its techniques in turn.
