In reply to Paul Courtney-
 
The person writing the historical document was recording, or at least
reflecting, his/her "impressions" of others and in that sense historical
documents have a bias that the archaeological record does not.  There is
no "filter" through which material remains, writ large, past before
finding their way in to the record of the past. Much of the record is
unintentional in fact and accordingly can have no "maker" bias.
 
I think the idea of "objectivity" does come out of the New Archaeology,
but its implications for current practice are informed by more recent
social theory.  Trigger was never a positivist of that sort, and in fact
is well-known as a critic of the New Archaeology.
 
 
That said, I think the issue of the "objectivity" of the record itself
far less important than the issue of bias on the part of the
archaeologist, who in developing excavation strategies, recording field
data, and analyzing and interpreting data must make thousands of
decision and interpretations about what is in the ground, which data are
important, and what it all means.
 
I would never argue, and certainly did not mean to imply, that
historians don't also filter and analyze data developed from documentary
sources.  Both records represent texts with which the researcher must
engage in order to produce interpretations here in the present.  Is it
"truth" ? almost certainly not, it is an interpretation of the past in
the light of the present. It is what one can believe to be true.  The
past is indeed a foreign county - get used to it!
 
John
 
John P. McCarthy, SOPA
Minneapolis