Archaeology: From Hammer to Pen

The central question and the difficult problem in archaeology as an academic discipline are rational bridging between material and immaterial aspects of subject matters which are addressed by archaeologists. In a general sense, a fundamental dilemma in any process of archaeological studies and historical discipline that are involved with human past is a dichotomy between present and past, and between material and immaterial aspects of their subject matters. Archaeological excavation can only be conducted once as it is an unrepeatable experiment. Conceptualization of archaeological data and adoption of texts are likewise inevitable in any archaeological fieldwork. All topics addressed in this article, from top to down, are about clarifying the same issue.