14th October 2011, 06:19 PM
We could take a slightly more scientific approach though, and in fact better-thought-out projects do employ some 'scientific' approaches - you dig a section across a ditch and it has 2nd century pot in it, then you dig another section (effectively testing the results of the first section - who says repeatability isn't possible in 'destructive' field archaeology?) but the new bit has 4th century pot in it, so you sit down and work out a way to resolve the inconsistent results (usually by digging more of the ditch) - am reasonably certain thats how things are done in most other scientific disciplines. If the solution turns out to be that they really did apparently spend 200 years digging and back-filling along a ditch, then you put that hypothesis out there for either yourself or others to disprove later - just because there are 300 year old unproven mathematical theorems out there hasn't led anyone to suggest that maths isn't a science....