Morgan and all:

     Yes, the "why" is an implicit question you ask of the records, but we
     were talking about a hierarchy of "fact."  Structures found in the
     ground are facts (if you're sure you have a structure, that is) -- and
     if a document described them and allowed you to find them, you can say
     that the document told you the truth.  The next level up, material
     culture information in the records, creeps into the area that Ned was
     talking about: you don't know who actually wrote the records or what
     their agenda was.  You assume that a group of internally consistent
     records is telling you something like a truth, if you can work out a
     hypothetical reality that ties them together, but you always keep in
     mind that you could wake up tomorrow with a completely different
     hypothetical construct that fits those records.  Or the discovery that
     the whole set is a forgery -- although this isn't likely.

     Making that hypothetical construct from the array of data is where
     your personal theoretical basis for historical research will be most
     obvious.  Whereas your archaeological theoretical basis will show up
     in other areas, such as your pattern for deciding where to open the
     next unit when you're in the field, or which way to go with the
     statistical analysis when you're in the lab.

     "Why" is way on down the road of hypothesis, and depends on so many
     other assumptions about the records that in many cases it would be the
     first to change with the discovery of a new document that pertains to
     your site, or the recognition that one you had and dismissed actually
     refers to your place.  Still, we all have to offer our best
     interpretation of why a site was there, why it changed, why it was
     abandoned.

     Jake