Archaeology is centrally concerned with the tension between material remains in the present and a reconstructed past. This tension is captured by the concept of a trace, namely a contemporary phenomenon that references the past through some sort of epistemic intervention. Traces are deceptively complex in terms of both their epistemology and their ontology and hence worthy of detailed exploration. In particular, archaeological traces not only concern the past per se but also possess a latent quality of as yet unrealized signification. This gives archaeological traces a future orientation that is rarely considered in discussions of archaeological epistemology.

中文翻译：

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痕迹考古学

考古学主要关注现在的物质遗迹和重建的过去之间的紧张关系。这种张力被痕迹的概念所捕捉，即一种通过某种认知干预引用过去的当代现象。痕迹在认识论和本体论方面都看似复杂，因此值得详细探索。特别是，考古痕迹不仅涉及过去本身，而且还具有尚未实现的潜在意义。这为考古痕迹提供了未来的方向，而在考古认识论的讨论中很少考虑这一点。