The notion that things or statements about things exist or are true independently (and therefore absolutely) of human existence or belief. It is often opposed to subjectivism which states that knowledge and truth are not thus independent. The debate between processual and postprocessual archaeology has been characterised as a polarisation between objectivist and subjectivist approaches. This is held by some archaeologists (traditional, processual and postprocessual) to be a very damaging and unnecessary polarisation. The point should not be to polarise but instead to relate the knower and the known.

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