Archaeologists also are starting to understand that 'doing philosophy' is a process. It is not merely a matter of waiting for the answer to your question to come out of a fortune teller's machine at the arcade. This revelation has contributed to archaeology by showing that even the data that we pull out of the ground, what we have considered 'hard evidence,' can not be considered objective. The basic choices that we make in calling one artifact or ecofact 'data' or in choosing to excavate in a particular manner, or with a specific goal effects the results of our studies in ways which we are only beginning to understand. In light of these discoveries, alternative theories of knowledge are being tested, and many of these models have some potential to answer archaeology's questions, or at least to help focus on the issues relevant to the field.
Inductive inference is one such example.
Induction is the opposite of deduction, which is the basis of new archaeology's epistemological platform. Deduction is made up of non-ampliative inferences. As a result, deductive arguments can be thought of as form driven. Given that the premises are true, a valid deductive argument guarantees that the conclusion is true. The premises force us to accept the conclusion.