Which might be construed as an apposite admonition to those who still argue the tiresome and illusory issue of the relative importance of "theory" and "practice." That reflection upon the principles of archaeology has been indulged for many years now is amply demonstrated by even a perfunctory survey of archaeological literature. The majority of those reflective exercises, however, are on methodology or even technique, rather than on the philosophy of archaeology. Discussions of, for example, the principles of typology and taxonomy, are methodological discussions. The methods presuppose certain epistemological premisses,1 which are usually tacit, and unconsciously assumed. Discussions of, for further example, seriation practices, are of technique, seriation being a technique used to implement a method. In conceptual consideration of a discipline there appears to be a continuum, if one thinks in linear terms, from technique through method to critical philosophy to speculative philosophy. It may be more accurate, and is certainly more in accord with the temper of this paper, to regard the situation not as a continuum but as a number of foci, the dependencies of which overlap those of other designated, rather than defined, disciplines. The intention in this paper is to indicate some of the problems in the critical philosophy of archaeology. In general, each of these problems has a speculative as well as a critical aspect, but it is no part of the present concern to examine the speculative aspects or to do any more than barely to indicate them where such indication is necessary to the consideration of the critical philosophy. The ways in and with which the problems of its critical philosophy are, if not answered, then temporized, are reflected in "practice," i.e., in the methods used in archaeology. As the temporizing or "answering" is rarely explicit and is usually unconsciously assumed, the present concern becomes one of examining, however briefly, some of the conceptual presuppositions of archaeology, principally those of an epistemological kind. It is not proposed to attempt to solve those GORDON R. LOWTHER iS Curator of Anthropology at McCord Museum, McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada). His fields of specialization are archaeology, methodology, and critical philosophy of archaeology. The geographic area in which he is interested is the Arctic, especially the Canadian Arctic. The present article, submitted to CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY on March 6, 1961, was sent for CA* treatment to forty-two scholars of whom the following responded with written comments: Carlos Alonso del Real, David Bidney, Glyn Daniel, Helmuth Fuchs, Gutorm Gjessing, Erika Kaneko, Alex D. Krieger, S. C. Malik, Albert C. Spaulding, Julian H. Steward, and Gordon R. Willey. The comments written for publication are printed in full after the author's text. I Throughout this paper the spelling "premiss" is used instead of the more common form "premise," on the grounds that the difference in spelling represents a useful distinction between the use of the word in a technically logical context and its use in less specialized discussion.