This is kind of hard to put into words. What I’m asking is, how would an archaeologist be able to tell if what they’ve just found is evidence of a massive cultural phenomenon or just a weird and singular thing?
Like, if someone dug up an ancient carving that they hadn’t seen before, would they assume that it had some sort of religious or cultural purpose immediately? Or would they just think “the guy that made this must’ve been really into carving”? Do they just always assume the latter until they see the carving pop up in different areas, or do they go towards the former more often without explicit backup evidence?
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It’s difficult. Ideally you would like to have other points of comparison from this culture and similar cultures to be able to form a better conclusion.
There are some general principles you can apply though. Since only a small fraction of ancient sites survive to the present day, it would be especially unlikely that something which was unusual in its time would survive. So you may assume that what you have found is representative, if there is no special reason that this specific site would be preserved and discovered.
On the other hand, some biases can be inferred without much knowledge about the culture in question. For example, rich graves probably belong to people of high status because most societies operate that way, and most could hardly afford to give such a grave to everyone. And such an elaborate tomb is more likely to be preserved and discovered than a nameless grave or cremation site.
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