Introduction

This introduction chapter gives the connectivity between archaeology and various disciplines such as ontology, epistemology and anthropology. Archaeological evidence consists of fragments: Single finds are found broken, and clusters of evidence are viewed as pieces of larger wholes. Archaeological theory has moved from articulating concerns about the ideological implications of archaeology to examining issues about what archaeology is and does; in short, present-day archaeological theory has an ontological focus. Epistemological discourses focus on how one composes knowledge through their practices. This conception has some important consequences: First, it shows that epistemology is governed by the assumption that one need to explain and understand everything. Second, it shows that otherness is viewed as a feature that we need to bridge. The fragmentation that one perceives as characteristic of both the ontological view of reality and the epistemological view of archaeology is potentially provocative. The provocativeness is caused by the fact that fragmentation runs against the intellectual thrust of scholarship.