Archaeology has played a significant role in reconstructing and formulating Korean prehistory and history since it emerged as a subdiscipline of history and anthropology in the early twentieth century. Due to its unique methodology of discovering material records and deciphering their meanings and context, archaeology has identified itself either as a pure classical humanities approach or a new scientific approach to the past. In either case, the glaring deficiency in Korean archaeology is lack of dialogue among researchers. As a modern independent discipline distinguished from conventional historiographic research, Korean archaeology should be devoid of positivistic claims because actors and actions of the past are not to be clearly imprinted on the material data or artifact assemblages, archaeologically. With actors and actions unclarified, the narrative can’t be constituted; archaeological knowledge and its descriptive phrases always tend to be segmentary because past events cannot but be restored as “ownerless.”

中文翻译：

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客座编辑介绍：韩国考古学的替代方法

考古学在 20 世纪初作为历史和人类学的一个分支学科出现以来，在重建和阐述韩国史前史和历史方面发挥了重要作用。由于其发现物质记录并破译其含义和背景的独特方法，考古学已将自己确定为纯粹的古典人文方法或对过去的新科学方法。在这两种情况下，韩国考古学的明显缺陷是研究人员之间缺乏对话。作为一门有别于传统史学研究的现代独立学科，韩国考古学应该没有实证主义的主张，因为在考古学上，过去的演员和行为不会被清楚地烙印在材料数据或人工制品组合上。演员和动作不明，叙述不能成立；考古知识及其描述性短语总是倾向于分段，因为过去的事件不能不恢复为“无主”。