A. Voorrips, Information science in archaeology, «Archeologia e Calcolatori» 7, 1996, 306.

The metaphor I select to describe those of us who advocate a change in the thinking patterns of archaeologists is that of the middleman. «A 'classical' middleman is 'born' inside the culture of archaeology, has learned some of the language and culture of information science, alienates himself more or less from his archaeological culture and then functions as a channel through which information and goods are exchanged between both cultures.

A middle man also has his own language. In that language, the concepts from different cultures are worded so that an interaction becomes possible. For applied information science in archaeology, the middleman language consists of mathematical models that are applied to archaeology.

Such models do more than only bridge the gap between archaeology and information science. They try to put concepts from archaeology and information science into a coherent, necessarily more general, framework of thought, thus creating concepts on a higher level of abstraction. Developing such concepts may be of more use to the 'parent' cultures than straightforward translations from one culture to another.

In a different terminology: the historically determined dialectic opposition between science and humanities, as represented by old-fashioned mathematics and old-fashioned archaeology resolves itself in a synthesis-applied information science in archaeology» (Voorrips 1985, chapter 1).