ABSTRACT
The individual investigator with his unique combination of interpretive skills provides the only possible means for the reconstruction of the cultural context of an archaeological collection. The final judgment of any archaeologist’s cultural reconstructions must therefore be based on an appraisal of his professional competence, and particularly the quality of the subjective contribution to that competence. The other use of historical archaeology is in economic history: distribution of artefacts leads to generalizations about trade patterns which are simply the opposite side of the coin seen in studies of trade records and port books by economic historians. A problem tackled by L. R. Binford is why the existence of “laws that are validated in the context of the epistemology of science” are a legitimate assumption in the study of the past and therefore ultimately findable in the first place, and why archaeology should be forced to be a science.
