Resumo
Most of the knowledge that we produce in archaeology comes from careful argumentation from basic premises to elaborate conclusions. Initial premises include descriptions of finds, features, sites and landscapes, while conclusions range from settlement patterns to trade routes or social organisations.In this regard, most archaeological texts constitute discourses that try to persuade the reader to accept a series of conclusions based on some initial premises, often factual and evidentially supported.Whether or not an archaeological text is capable of persuading its readers and thus advance the state of the art in the field depends on the quality of the chosen premises as well as the robustness of the subsequent argumentation. Therefore, paying attention to discourse and argumentation in archaeology constitutes a crucial aspect of meta-research. Language technologies have evolved rapidly over the last ten years, and today we can process natural language on a computer with relative ease, at least for some well-defined purposes. The conceptualisation of discourse and argumentation has advanced significantly as well, together with applied approaches. Although the importance of discourse and language in archaeology has been pointed out by many authors, there is no comprehensive work to date that presents a panoramic view of argumentation and discourse approaches and technologies in archaeology. In this book, we aim to provide this.
Palabras chave
Argumentation. Discourse analysis. Archaeology.