I've always hated that quote. If it were true, archaeology papers would be nothing more than photographs of things people found. As soon as the archaeologist points to something and says "tool" or "weapon", then opinion, interpretation and "truth" are part of the equation.
So much of archaeology has been thrown away as junk science. The artifacts on which that science was based have not been tossed, we have just reinterpret them. We no longer interpret dinosaur bones as evidence of mythical dragons any more than we see the Grand Canyon as evidence of Noah's flood.