experimental archaeology, philosophy of historiography, constructivism, evidence

ABSTRACT. The epistemic challenges to the historical sciences include the direct inaccessibility of their subject matters and limited empirical data whose scope and variety cannot be easily augmented. The output of historiographic research is rarely in the form of universal or general theory. Nonetheless, these properties do not distinguish the historical sciences from other disciplines. The historical sciences have been successful in generating knowledge of the past. One of the methods common to the natural sciences that historians and archaeologists pursue in order to bridge different academic cultures is the experimental method, most clearly manifest in experimental archaeology. This paper examines the use of experiments in historical and archaeological research and situate them in relation to contemporary philosophies of historiography. Experiments in historiography can take many forms – they can be designed based on textual, pictorial, or other non-textual evidence including fragments of artefacts; they can take place inside the laboratories or in the field. Designers of experiment can aim to describe an exact occurrence in the past (e. g. specific event), types of production techniques, to interpret technical texts, or to inquire into the daily life of our ancestors. However, can the results of such experiments cohere with other scientific historical methods? Can experiment in archaeology truly verify or falsify historiographic hypotheses? Is the experimental method suitable for historical research and to what extent? How do we represent the results of experimental archaeology? These questions accompanied by individual examples of experimental archaeology are discussed in relation to the constructivist approach to historiography and in relation to historical anti realism. It is argued that despite the fruitfulness of some experiments, their results generally suffer from the same underdetermination as other historiographic methods and theories.