A large piece of the future in studying the past will be found in the laboratory. Archaeological science has the potential to open new doors into the past and yet remains a largely underfunded and underappreciated part of the discipline.

At his inaugural lecture T. Douglas Price will give some examples of recent isotopic studies from the Maya region, ancient China, and the Norse Atlantic help to document the usefulness of such approaches. and also some thoghts on the state of archaeological science in Denmark.