Can you expand a bit on how archeology can be used to confirm or disprove an account of an event, though? I can see how it is used to show how a certain bath was built, although the "experiment" is only run (or needed) once for this. But suppose there was a war: who took up arms first, and where did the General Scarface die, and how many months did they fight before that happened, forcing his country to surrender and accept adverse terms in a treaty of which only part of the contents have survived by anecdote? Maybe this should be in the question itself.

The introduction to this paper at Boston University, for example, mentions experimental scientists who exclude empirically un-falsifiable hypotheses from the realm of science: "they can never be tested by experiment, and so they are unscientific. . . No science can ever be historical." (although the conclusion of the author is that "When it comes to testing hypotheses, historical science is not inferior to classical experimental science.") But this conclusion is based on saying that the hypotheses of experimental science are no more securely established by evidence than those of investigators who "postulate differing causal etiologies for the traces they observe, and then try to discriminate from among them by ... a trace that will identify the culprit beyond a reasonable doubt."

Conrado‭ One obvious example of a confirmed/disproven event is that Christopher Columbus was for a very long time considered the one who first discovered America - it was still taught in schools until recently even. However, historians had a theory that Leif Eriksson from Greenland discovered it some 500 years earlier. The story of him finding "Vinland" was mostly based on legends, sagas and questionable records, but seemed probable. And in recent years (1960s), archaeologists have found remains of viking settlements in Canada, which they can compare to archaeological findings from similar viking settlements from the same era, proving the theory to be correct (building techniques, findings of coins, runes or whatever it might be). So the event of Christopher Columbus being the first who discovered America is disproven - although people living in southern Europe around the 15th century had no reason to believe otherwise and so he was considered the first for centuries.

Yes, the Vikings visiting or even settling in America is a good example. That Eriksson had been to another place across the ocean was in the stories that the old folks handed down somehow. But in my "scientific method" model, finding Viking settlements prove nothing at all about Eriksson; only that Vikings (or someone very much like them) were there, below a certain layer of earth (which can be used to infer, within certain parameters, the time when they were there). Proving that Eriksson himself was there would be non-trivial; you'd need fingerprints or something like that.

Conrado‭ Yes but just because something is very hard or even impossible doesn't make the archeological endeavor or methods less scientific. Another myth/conspiracy theory I recall was that the Swedish King Karl XII who died in a battle was supposedly shot by his own men, because they were tired of wars. According to the legend he was supposedly shot with a button from a Swedish uniform even. People like to make up conspiracy theories about big events like Kings or Presidents getting killed. And since it would be impossible to prove one theory or another, this story has been around for centuries. Historians and scientists have spent ridiculous amounts of efforts in proving this theory wrong. First proving that it wasn't a button. But it wasn't until last year when they finally managed to prove with modern forensic that he couldn't have been shot by the Swedes. But rather he was shot at a distance which matches the distance to where the hostile soldiers were positioned on the battlefield.