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Knowing the Past: Philosophical Issues of History and Archaeology
Knowing the Past Philosophical Issues of History and Archaeology Author:Peter Kosso How can we know what really happened in the distant past in places like ancient Mesopotamia, Palestine, Greece, and Rome, especially since the material evidence is often so fragmentary and ancient cultures are so different from our contemporary frame of reference? Scholars may examine historical documents and archaeological artifacts, and then ... more »make reasonable inferences. But in the final analysis, can we ever really know what happened in the distant past? At best, it can be reconstructed only by means of hypotheses that coherently organize all available data. Credible knowledge claims about the past, and indeed about many areas of science, rest on an independence between theory and evidence, and between interpretation and data. In this fascinating study, Peter Kosso brings together philosophical issues of history and archaeology to describe the basis of our knowledge of the human past. In the first part of this book, the conceptual argument, Kosso proposes a model of knowledge of the past. In the second part, he presents three detailed case studies drawn from the work of historians and archaeologists, ranging from the interpretation of ancient manuscripts and inscriptions to the cleaning and cataloging of pottery shards in the field. These studies support and fine-tune his proposal. KNOWING THE PAST presents many valuable insights into the limits of knowledge and our ability to recover the mental as well as the physical past. Historians, archaeologists, and students of epistemology will profit from this fascinating discussion.« less