I have followed the two recent debates on the list with interest.  First,
we went over the relation of archaeology to history as disciplines or
varieties of inquiry into the past.  Second, we are again going over the
problem of writing, and how we are to produce for the public (who pay our
salaries, and support or research) an understanding of the results of our
projects.

I formerly thought that the answer to this (second) problem was simple.
Historians, in general, exceed us greatly in writing, and, especially, in
creating books, essays or articles that an educated, but not expert, member
of the public can understand with ease, and read for pleasure as well as
for information.  This may come from the literary traditions of history,
and the acceptance of narrative as a legitimate form of expression in that
discipline; going back to Gibbon, or Herodotus, the best historians have
succeeded in telling a good story.

A part of our problem is our heritage as a science, and our tradition of
presenting arguments and conclusions from an evidentiary, not a narrative,
base.  Historians can write histories that advocate certain ideas, and at
least in part their success depends upon their use of rhetoric as well as
factual evidence.  Archaeologists, as scientists, must subordinate
narrative and rhetoric to the evidence, the facts, the data, on which we
base our conclusions.  We get no points for a good argument, if we cannot
back it from facts.  So, we proceed to write at great length about how we
got those facts--research designs, methodology, formal presentations of
analysis, in service of the scientific responsibility of presenting our
data to colleagues who will test it, argue it, and reconfirm (or deny) it.
This is all the more necessary due to that old truism about archaeology;
our experiments in excavation are not exactly repeatable by others, in that
we destroy our primary information in the process of excavation.
Historians do not present this type of information in detail.  For the most
part, beyond listing the archives they consulted and the sources they used
(often in acknowledgments or footnotes), they do not describe their process
of research ("I drove to the library.  I parked in the back.  I went into
the building, and stored my briefcase in the locker.  I requested Col.
Blovington's letters of 1710-1718 from the archivist, and I booted up Word
on my laptop while I awaited their delivery...").  Yet, we have to describe
how we chose where to dig, laid out test units, recovered artifacts,
identified and analyzed them, and worked so slowly, painfully, yet surely
toward our conclusions.  The conclusions, of course, are what interest the
non-specialist audience.  Can anyone, even the most talented writer, make
such description interesting?

It would be entirely too simple to say that we should just emulate our
"more skilled" colleagues in history, and write narratives.  Yet, can we do
that, when the very nature of our science, and of the information that we
recover, rests on this very different means of inquiry?  I also must admit
that I have lost some of my enthusiasm for narrative uber alles, having run
across the occasional "historian" (Dinesh DiSouza, for one) who abuses
basic methods of research and historical argument.  Such tricks can make a
better argument, and they hardly impede the readability of a narrative, but
they do damage (all the more, for being skilled) to the basic purpose of
inquiry into the past.  In such a case, it might be better to be boring.

I think we're left with a basic question--can we preserve and present our
tradition of careful inquiry, and fact-based research, yet present it in a
manner that would be interesting to a public who do not want to read 2-3
chapters/100=200 pages describing the process of research?  If we can't,
simply, replicate the narratives of historians, what can we do?  Or, can we
replicate these narratives?  Can we tell a good story, from "just the
facts?"