Good Questions Met by Archaeological Revelations

This symposium presents experiences with a different approach to the conference theme of «Questions that Count» Some of the greatest moments in our scientific practice come when we launch rigorous investigations, based on robust, theoretically informed, and contextually tailored questions, only to see the archaeological record confront us with astonishing and unexpected revelations about the past. Each of these presentations provides an account of a project in which the evidence surprised and thwarted expectations and opened new avenues of inquiry. Some investigators demand that the expense of archaeology be justified by indications that documentary records and oral history accounts alone cannot provide ample evidence to understand particular cultural dynamics. Others insist that well-framed questions will always be best applied by addressing the often contrastive data sets of material culture, documents, and oral histories. A third observation can be equally poignant -- sometimes the archaeology will just astound us.