What's the Value of the Ethnographic Record?

I would say those who look at the ethnographic record as a direct window onto our ancient past are very few and far between these days. So it's just like doing any sort of historical comparison. Like you're not plugging in variables in an occasion, getting an answer. You're getting new tools to think with new ways of understanding the evidence at your disposal. And I think that's how most careful archaeologists and anthropologists today would think about it.