It's impossible for them to divorce their modern beliefs and then draw objective conclusions for the fact that they *want* to establish a name for themselves and get further funding. It's one of the most self-fulfilling 'sciences' today.
Apart from skeletal differences, their claims in the past (prior to DNA analysis) rested upon tool use and tool design. This is tenuous evidence as even today there are tools in use that aren't much different than what was used thousands of years ago. Those of us in the West can go to Home Cheapo and buy tools that most people in the world can't imagine.
And as for using customs to define species, one only need look at the Masai practice of tonguing a cow's arse to stimulate milk production where in the West we load them up with chemicals for that, yet you and I could certainly breed with some hot Masai chick.
Today's archaeologists are really no different than the British expeditions into deepest and darkest Africa where their findings made outrageous claims that the people they encountered were subhuman primitives.
Until unimpeachable DNA evidence is offered up, the debate of modern man's taxonomic uniqueness over Neanderthal's is moot.
I think I tried that once, and have the fractured bones to prove it! :)
Yeah, but the Neanderthalers didn't improve their tools for 100,000 years. That just ain't human...
So you think archaeological method and theory has not advanced in 150 years?
What cave have you been hiding in?
Signed: Coyoteman (an archaeologist)