New world archaeology exists as the driving force in American anthropological archaeology but old world archaeology is of concern as well. In either case, archaeologists seek explanation of human behavior as reflected in the archaeological record. The American paradigm, lodged in predictive research and the development of theories, laws, and a body of theory, has archaeology serving multiple aims, goals, and agendas. 

While archaeologists, as anthropologists continue to debate whether or not their discipline exists as a science or a humanity, biblical archaeology flourishes as a subdiscipline or specialty in anthropology such as in the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. As a subfield of near eastern archaeology, biblical archaeology traditionally concentrates on the bible lands and deals with the study of the archaeology of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament.

Through biblical archaeology one can gain a fuller perception of the events and the lifeways of the peoples and civilizations described in the Bible. A goal is to reconstruct the lifeways of biblical peoples and learn of the cultural change, known as cultural process, in their civilizations.

Culture in the study of ancient peoples refers to their learned and transmitted behavior over time. A procedural definition of biblical archaeology emphasizes the systematic recovery of the surviving remains of ancient civilizations in the Bible lands.

In its quest to illuminate our understanding of biblical times, biblical archaeology, reflects the defining characteristics of both the humanities and the sciences. Its focus is upon the production of knowledge concerning biblical peoples and their lifeways from their earliest beginnings through the period of the New Testament. The epistemological question challenging biblical archaeologists is – what can we know and how can we know it?

At one time the Bible, supported by other ancient texts such as the works of Flavius Josephus, Herodotus, and Eusebius, provided the structure for interpretation of bible lands sites and artifacts. Today biblical archaeologists place less emphasis upon written texts and draw more heavily upon the sciences to do their work. Some biblical archaeologists consider themselves scientists and others do not.

As the discipline becomes increasingly secularized, its task is less the search for truth and more a search for facts. The underlying ends of biblical archaeology, a specialty in archaeology, are the advancement of knowledge through reconstruction of the lifeways of biblical peoples and their explanation.

When the primary means by which archaeologists achieve these ends is by the discovery of the material culture of biblical peoples, through science informed by history, biblical archaeology is part of the social sciences. The desired outcome is explanation (see Archaeology as Science). 

When the primary means is by textual study, that is, by history informed by science, biblical archaeology is part of the humanities. The desired outcome is interpretation (see Archaeology as History).

Another trend in archaeological thought is postmodernism. Archaeologists following this approach draw upon the methods and principles of philosophical hermeneutics, to “read” the archaeological record, rather than those of science.