Research Design in Archaeology: The Interdisciplinary Perspective

Abstract

AEB 1998.0469 Studying the issue of archaeological data versus historical synthesis, the author briefly discusses Egypt’s Late Bronze Age empire in Syria-Palestine, in particular the evidence for the degree of independence exercised over time by individual city states while they were incorporated into the Egyptian empire. Further, in the discussion of the territorial state during the Iron Age II the Asiatic campaign of Sheshonq I, which left its textual traces at Megiddo, is briefly considered. Archaeology today finds its most strained relations with the field of history, the field, ironically, of its intellectual origins. This circumstance restricts and diminishes archaeology. While archaeology must continue to recover and identify material culture and proceed with its interpretation, dialogue with the discipline of history enriches archaeological investigation and stirs its imagination in the creation of meaningful interdisciplinarity.