he first tentative step forward towards archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason. Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries was a time of great growth in scientific and natural exploration. Scientists, poets, philosophers, and painters reached into classical antiquity, particularly Greece, to wonder how rationalism, what they considered the supreme human reason, ever came to be realized. Human society everywhere must develop linearly, it was felt, beginning with stone tools, growing with the invention of agriculture, and ending with the pinnacle of human culture--European scientific society (at least according to European scientific society).
Can't find part I. AHEM.