ARCHAEOLOGY CONFRONTS NEW PARADIGMS (AGAIN)

Wickham C

This conclusion sums up the previous contributions. It characterises some of the problems which natural science and natural-scientific methods pose if the disciplines dealing with the past wish to - as they must - confront the new opportunities which the sciences can bring us, and some of the ways they can be overcome, including circular arguments and the failure to recognise that different disciplines have different epistemologies; and it offers some ideas to how interdisciplinary convergence can be achieved in practice.