This chapter introduces the core themes and goals of the book. The discussion of these claims for disciplinary distinctiveness requires several observations about the nature of archaeological epistemology and metaphysics that are linked to a notion of an unfolding sense of the distinctiveness of archaeological records as records of human action. These observations form the basis of three of the subsidiary themes of this book: enrolment and symbiosis, rhetoric and performance, and the developing theoretical significance of archaeological records. They also assist in the development of the more fundamental issues such as the sources of authority to support the viability of theories and practices, and the increasingly contentious accounts of the nature of archaeology as a discipline.