Comment by AlotOfReading
3 days ago
I'm not sure you've ever seen multiple archaeologists in a room together if you think they agree on definitions, or that agreeing on definitions is sufficient to end their arguments.
Usually we say archaeology is a "big tent" field, where anything that's useful can find a place rather than relying on prescriptive definitions of what should and shouldn't be used. If this gives you flashbacks to Feyerabend's epistemological anarchism, you've got the idea.
There are definitely scientific things within archaeology and many archaeologists who spend their days doing activities indistinguishable from what goes on in adjacent geology and biology labs. It's not uncommon for archaeologists to hop back and forth from the biology and anthropology departments either. There was even a movement called processualism in the 50s-70s to fit archaeology within the scope of a traditional science that's widely regarded as a failure.
Of course we would also have to ask what a science is. The traditional hypothesis->experiment "scientific method" is used in archaeology, but doesn't really apply to historical events. We can generalize that a bit to the Cleland's "smoking gun" idea for historical sciences (so we don't need to fully throw out popper) and indeed it's quite a popular perspective today for the "best" way to do archaeology. It's just not the the totality of methods used by the people we call archaeologists.
I don't disagree on any particular point; i just dislike the dismissive attitude writing off archaeology as a science.