Robert Chapman and Alison Wylie draw upon Lewis R. Binford’s method of middle-range theories and Stephen Toulmin’s pattern of argument to explain the structure of inferential scaffolding in archaeological interpretation. However, when analyzing Binford’s method of middle-range theories and Toulmin’s pattern of argument, it becomes evident that these two models are not compatible and cannot explain the structure of inferential scaffolding in the way proposed by Chapman and Wylie. I claim that Chapman and Wylie’s model illustrates instead how research results are presented to the audience or written in historiography, and that it does not describe the process of reasoning from data to evidential claims. The aim of this paper is to show why Binford’s method of middle-range theories and Toulmin’s pattern of argument are not compatible, and how Chapman and Wylie’s model should be modified to describe the structure of inference in archaeology.