Meaning and truth

     "Meaning" and "truth" are weighty words, loaded with philosophical overtones, and they take on a special nuance in archaeology: we seek to find meaning in our own human dimension, but one that harks back to a distant past and is mediated primarily through material culture. The uncertainty about the truth of our inference is thus raised, as it were, to the double power. Here is our double predicament. First, how do we transition from the factual data to meaning? And then, in the words of Vico, how do we bring truth to the givenness of facts ("inverare il certo")?