How Archaeology and Written Evidence Can Disagree

What should historians do when an ancient writer describes a magnificent city, powerful army or dramatic battle, but archaeologists cannot find the evidence they expected? The puzzle arises because archaeology and written evidence preserve different traces of the past. Neither form automatically outranks the other: each can answer some questions clearly while leaving others uncertain. The central question is how these different kinds of evidence can be understood without treating disagreement as proof that one must be false.