Why Archaeological Classifications Are Theory-Laden: The Ontology of Artifact Types
The categories we sort artifacts into shape the ancient worlds we claim to discover
The Problem of Absence: What Missing Evidence Can and Cannot Tell Us
When the archaeological record falls silent, the challenge is knowing whether that silence means anything at all
How Climate Proxy Data Transforms Ancient History: Method and Controversy
When ice cores meet cuneiform tablets, rigorous method must distinguish genuine insight from correlation masquerading as causation.
How Landscape Archaeology Escapes Site-Bound Thinking
Understanding regions as coherent systems transformed archaeological inference but introduced biases that excavation never faced.
How Site Formation Processes Corrupt the Archaeological Record
Between ancient discard and modern excavation lies a gauntlet of processes that systematically corrupt what survives
Why Ancient Economies Resist Modern Categories: The Substantivist Challenge
When modern economic concepts meet ancient evidence, whose assumptions survive the encounter?
The Biography of Objects: Tracing Use-Lives Through Material Analysis
Archaeological methods for reconstructing how ancient objects were made, used, and deposited reveal histories embedded in material traces
The Limits of Analogy in Archaeological Interpretation
Why comparing ancient societies to known ones illuminates some truths while projecting dangerous assumptions onto others
Reading Destruction Layers: The Archaeology of Violence and Its Interpretive Pitfalls
How archaeologists struggle to distinguish ancient warfare from earthquakes, accidents, and the slow decay of abandonment
The Radiocarbon Revolution and Its Methodological Discontents
Why the precision of radiocarbon dates obscures the probability distributions and interpretive challenges that actually govern archaeological chronology
How Stratigraphic Reasoning Transformed Our Understanding of Ancient Chronology
How borrowed geological principles taught archaeologists to read time in the ground beneath their feet
Why Archaeological Context Matters More Than Objects: The Provenience Revolution
An artifact without a findspot is a word without a sentence—grammatically intact but semantically empty.
The Synchronism Problem: How We Connect Ancient Chronologies Across Cultures
Why the confident dates in your ancient history textbooks rest on chains of inference more fragile than you might expect
How Ancient DNA Rewrites History: Promises and Methodological Cautions
Beyond genetic percentages: what ancient DNA can and cannot tell us about past populations and cultural change
Why Ancient Historians Lie: Source Criticism and the Problem of Intentional Distortion
Analytical tools for detecting systematic bias in primary sources and recovering historical truth from deliberately distorted ancient texts
When the Archive Falls Silent: Methodologies for Studying Non-Literate Societies
How archaeologists reconstruct historical knowledge from material traces alone, navigating the boundaries between robust inference and irreducible uncertainty.
Why Typology Fails: The Limits of Artifact Classification in Dating
Examining how evolutionary assumptions, production complexity, and statistical refinement shape the reliability of artifact-based chronologies in archaeological practice.
How Dendrochronology Anchors Ancient Chronology: Method, Limits, and Controversies
Why the most precise dating method in archaeology demands careful evaluation of its regional limits and unanchored sequences.
The Problem of Contemporaneity: Can We Ever Know What Happened at the Same Time?
Why our confident claims about simultaneous ancient events often rest on chronological sand, and how probabilistic thinking reveals what we actually know.
The Forgery Problem: How False Evidence Corrupts Historical Knowledge
Forgeries don't just deceive—they contaminate scholarship for generations, demanding detection methods as sophisticated as the fabrications themselves.