Cynics sometimes suggest that ‘progress’ in historiography is no more than a series of mutual misunderstandings, as historians rush to disprove things that others had never intended to say. In writing a methodological book like this I perhaps run even more of a risk of creating the wrong impression than I would in a more substantive work. I have argued that a kind of evidence which most ancient historians ignore is in fact a vital source; and that when historians have used it, it has generally been in the least appropriate ways. Some readers will find this annoying, incomprehensible or not worth the bother; but others, I hope, may see ways to extend their own research. I close with a summary of the points I have tried to make, but first I will set out a series of propositions which I have not made.

WHAT IS NOT BEING SAID

Burials are the ‘best’ source

Classicists who rely mainly on texts and those who rely mainly on archaeological evidence often act as if they were two sides in a competition, and one day an impartial observer will judge whose evidence is best and who wins the game. We have to take our evidence where we can find it; and my argument here has been that we need to combine as many genres as possible. Historians who write about community without using material evidence for rituals and archaeologists who write their monographs without reference to historical concepts both lose out.