Literery sources are better than archaeological sources for writing history.?

Question

Literery sources are better than archaeological sources for writing history.?

Answer 1

Thankfully you asked here, not in Religion.

No. Written accounts and archaeological findings must be evaluated together. More often than it seems there are contradictions between the two: dating, exact order of events, etc.

Literary sources are often written by the victory party at wars, or dominant parties in an empire.

The archaeological and paleontological findings good when you want the full story, an account of feeding habits, size of cities, use of technology, development of culture in different areas, etc.

Also paleontological sources are better when you're digging down into the oldest civilizations, when the use of written language hadn't been developed yet.

Answer 2

Not necessarily.  Archaeological sources can often verify the literary ones.  So both a equally important.