This article underscores how ethnology has shaped archaeological interpretation, particularly in revealing the “people behind the objects”, and contrasts this impact with China’s long-standing historiographic orientation. Whereas Chinese archaeology historically focused on verifying written coduments, Europe and North America—lacking extensive texts—turned to ethnological analogies to explain stone tools and prehistoric societies. Early antiquaries, for example, recognized that “thunderstones” resembled implements used by contemporary indigenous peoples, which helped establishe the human-made nature and antiquity of prehistoric artifacts. Cultural evolutionists used cross-cultural comparisons to form models of social change, which represented by Morgan’s savagery, babarism,, and civilization model in the 19th century and Service’s band, tribe, chiefdom, and state model in the 20 century. New Archaeology introduced “middle range theory” and ethnoarchaeology, deploying systematic observation of living communities to infer behavior patterns from material remains. Yet in China, reliance on historical texts and the marginal status of anthropology have impeded a similar synergy. The author urges stronger interdisciplinary collaboration and appeals for archaeologists to acquire ethnological training. Only by integrating typological and stratigraphic analysis with anthropological perspectives can Chinese archaeology truly reconstruct social history rather than merely supplement written records.