The example is given of the blind man askedto study and describe an elephant. Because he cannot see the beast, he needs to use his welldeveloped sense of touch to gather the data necessary to describe the animal. But each time he approaches the creature and lays his hands upon it, the elephant shyly pulls away. The man realizes that he will never gather the information he needs without somehow stopping the animal from moving. So, he gets a gun. Returning to the elephant, he listens for its motions and then shoots and kills it. Finally, he is able to approach the animal, feel it, and describe it. "An elephant/7 the blind man states, "is a large, motionless beast that lies on its side and has a gaping hole in its head/7

In a sense, archaeologists are faced with this same conundrum; we are like the blind man in the story, and an archaeological site is like the elephant. Archaeological sites are the material representations of a culture. To collect site data we usually

need to excavate the material from out of the ground-and in so doing, we destroy the very site we are trying to study. But we have little choice. Archaeological material represents all we have to inform us directly of the lives of past peoples. To get at that material we necessarily apply a destructive technique of data collection-excavation.