Indian Writings on Early History and Archaeology of Southeast Asia: A Historiographical Analysis

“The recognition as well as interpretation of archaeological evidence will always be biased and incomplete. There can be no archaeologically achieved final truths or wholly objective interpretations. But to recognize such limitation is not to reduce the subject to a set of mere perceptual constructs. Archaeology is a societal activity that embodies both the residues of its past and its changing attitudes towards the past. We call the residues evidence and the attitudes interpretation. The continuing dialogue between the two enables archaeology, always open to new questions, to reveal new knowledge.”