Before rushing helter-skelter into information gathering, I have to know precisely what I'm trying to find out. I need to have a well-formulated research question to answer. After all, it takes curiosity to carry out a research project, and curiosity is driven by doubt.

In the case of Native American archaeology, the notion of reburying ancestral remains stirs all kinds of doubt in me, because I can see the arguments on both sides.

The scientist part of me places a high value on free inquiry and sees the notion of reburial as an obstacle to understanding our past. Repatriation may be especially misguided and even superstitious in the recent famous case of the Kennewick Man, since he seems to have been too remote genetically and chronologically to truly be called an "ancestor" of the tribes that claim his remains.

The humanist part of me places a high value on the rich and diverse range of human behaviors that emphasize the sacred and the transcendent, and it hesitates to approach the study of human beings without reverence and respect. Seen from this perspective, what the reburial represents is more important than the knowledge we could gain from studying the remains.

I could go on and multiply arguments on both sides. ("How would you feel if it were your ancestors being dug up and put in a museum without your consent?" "But these are not truly your ancestors. My European forebears have been dug up and put in museums, and I don't think of them as family or as sacred." "So much the worse is your value system, then. Yours is the 'scientific' knowledge of a colonial oppressor. You nearly exterminated us. Now must you rob our graves?")

The key thing is that I feel genuinely torn between these two lines of argument, in a genuine state of doubt about how this question should be resolved. My research, then, will be focused not on a vague subject area (or even a limited subtopic), but upon a single well-formulated research question:

From this central doubt I could spin topics in several directions. For instance, I could analyze the United States repatriation legislation to see how well it carries out the goal stated in my research question. Or I could analyze the controversies over Kennewick Man to better understand why the question of his "racial" identity has stirred so many passions. Or I could study the Smithsonian Institution guidelines to see how a major research institution has approached this problem. Or I could study Kennewick Man's immediate fame, in order to analyze how the media present scientific findings.

Depending upon my angle of approach, this could be a paper in anthropology, in sociology, in archaeology, in media studies, in ethics, or in communication, to mention only a few examples. My choice of academic discipline will govern the choices that I must make from this point forward. For example, if this is to be a paper for a sociology class, I may use periodical indexes specifically appropriate to that field. (See chapter four of The Research Process: "Finding Sources.") I may use APA format, which means that I will have to decide whether this is to be a theoretical article or a review article. (See page 198 of The Research Process.)

Because I am basically optimistic, I think that the answer to my research question is "yes," and I hope to support that answer with research. Thus my research question leads to my tentative thesis or hypothesis:

Now we are no longer merely doing an initial survey of the territory, nor are we blindly collecting information with the vague hope of eventually finding an argument. We are beginning to do real research. (See chapter three of The Research Process: "Generating an Argument.")

Real research often entails circling back in a spiral pattern. For example, now that we have limited the topic, we would be wise to go back to Britannica Online and search for something like "Native AND American AND burial" to find an overview of one aspect of our newly defined topic. (Click the last link and you'll notice that a Boolean search can produce some amusingly strange results along with some relevant material. Because an article summarizing the events of 1998 mentions the burial shroud of Turin, tobacco smoking among Alaskan natives, and several American items, the search engine displays the article's opening words--which happen to deal with the Paula Jones case!)

For now, just keep in mind that re-searching to develop your argument is a normal part of research.

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