Kent Flannery on What the World Wants from Archaeology

[W]hat the world wants is for archeology to teach it something about humanity's past. The world doesn't want epistemology from us. They want to hear about Olduvai Gorge, and Stonehenge, and Machu Picchu. People are gradually becoming aware that their first three million years took place before written history, and they look to archaeology as the only science--the only one--with the power to uncover that past.

Source

Kent V. Flannery. 1982. The golden Marshalltown. American Anthropologist 84:265-278.