David Babson makes some good points, but he misses a few as well.

First, our fieldwork descriptions are very different from a detailed
description of a historian's progress to the library.  Historians and
archaeologists both are supposed to describe whatever contributed to the
conclusions presented in their papers.  Even a site report can be a good
read as well as informative. Babson should go back and read Harrington's
"Outwork at Fort Raleigh" or Noel Hume's Tutter's Neck report.

Second, all of us are advocates. Churchill wrote his magnificent history of
the English-speaking peoples with a political objective, but it remains one
of the monuments of world historical writing, on a par with Gibbon.
Ferguson's Uncommon Ground, cited in this debate, is no less a presentation
of a point of view as it is a report of findings.

Name a major work in American archaeology that isn't (at least in part) an
eloquent reflection of the author's bias. That's why they are major works.

I don't see the point of Babson's statement that "Archaeologists, as
scientists, must subordinate narrative and rhetoric to the evidence, the
facts, the data, on which we base our conclusions."

Historians are supposedly trained to avoid putting their personal opinions
into their writing, just as archaeologists are. In fact, it doesn't happen
in either field, and the best works in both fields are clearly reflective
of the author's point of view.

The trick is to make a clear distinction between the reported fact and the
author's opinion. I don't think any of us would adopt the statement
attributed to that great humanist and leader of men, Andrei Gromyko, who
said, in one of his more passionate moments, "My personality does not
interest me."


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  Ned Heite, Camden, DE  http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html