ABSTRACT
The historical research framework is very legalistically and microscopically oriented, and verification of each step of the research process is a basic necessity if that research is to be considered valid and usable. One of the reasons why ‘extended’ archaeological techniques are producing distorted and even erroneous data at historical sites is that the field techniques of archaeology are at best only a prolonged statistical sampling process of any given site, no matter how thoroughly the site is excavated. The anthropologist deals with ‘people’ and the historical archaeologist deals with a person or persons. Increased public historical awareness and improved funds for doing historical research have combined to progenate a situation wherein historical archaeology has become a ‘fashionable’ professional pursuit. Every archaeologically recovered artifact from an historical site has two inherent dates: its date of manufacture and its date of deposition. Every prehistorical and historical site has a ‘prove-nience’, meaning its definable relationship to a temporal scale.
