Anyone proposing to increase the volume of essays on the intellectual foundations of archaeology is automatically under suspicion of hubris if not something worse. Our justification for still another effort is, of course, that we think the present situation exhibits confusion and misunderstanding that can be cleared away by careful analysis of some of the claims made in the name of science, history, or just plain truth. We do not pretend to give a complete and balanced description and analysis of the literature devoted to these intellectual foundations; instead, we confine ourselves to a few topics as illustrated by a few sources. In particular, we are concerned with the claims of excessive scientism and excessive historicism. In extreme form, scientism refers here to the view that there is a scientific method that can provide full understanding of the data of archaeology (and any other field of scientific inquiry) if it is applied diligently and correctly and that our failure to achieve full understanding of the data is the result of failure in the application of scientific method. Historicism in extreme form is the view that human behavior has a special character which precludes explanation by scientific methods because it is not governed by scientific laws; understanding is attained not through scientific explanation but rather through our peculiarly human ability to empathize, to enter into passions, fears, calculations, and aspirations of past humans. We will attempt to clarify these concepts and their archaeological implications with the aid of a brief discussion of 19th century and later philosophies of history and science followed by a consideration of two examples of commentary on archaeological philosophizing by philosophers. Our discussion of intellectual history leans heavily on the work of Barraclough (1962) and Berlin (1966).