“Deductive” versus “Inductive” Archaeology

Abstract

Disagreements among archaeologists about whether inductive or deductive methods are appropriate for establishing archaeological hypotheses are often founded in a misunderstanding of the nature of inductive reasoning. In this paper several cases of confirmation of archaeological hypotheses are examined in order to expose the logical structure of the reasoning involved. In all these cases the structure is basically inductive. In actual practice the methodology adopted by archaeologists is far more sophisticated than the account of this methodology presented by archaeologists.