ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the material culture as evidence, and about how archaeologists use this evidence. The concept of 'evidence' is, of course, central to the practice of law. Lawyers and archaeologists both talk about 'evidence', about inferences drawn from evidence, about 'supposition' and about 'proving' things. Both archaeologists and lawyers attempt to establish what happened in that 'real past' by collecting evidence, marshalling it, and using that evidence to construct a version of what happened. Archaeologists and those involved in undertaking investigations for legal reasons also face a shared 'philosophical' problem in going about their work. One way in which lawyers order their evidence and start to work up their case is by constructing a chronology: in essence, asking what happened when. Equally, for archaeologists, constructing a chronology is a basic archaeological task. One piece of archaeological apparatus does, though, have something in common with Wigmorean charts: the 'Harris matrix'.