It\'s all Greek to me (Makedonians included) ...

[Rumo]

We use archaeology to confirm or sometimes dispute history as it has been passed upon us.

That's one way to use it, and it' called culture-historical paradigm and it was and it is widely criticized (true, not so much in classical studies, but that's another discussion). Archaeology however can show how material culture is manipulated to create and maintain social, cultural and political (and sometimes also ethnic) identities, regardless if we have a historical reference which we can associate to it or not. And archaeology, to be sure, rather conflicts with many Greek myths of origins. For instance, from Catherine Morgan's Early Greek States beyond the Polis (Routledge 2003 - a great book about Early Iron Age Central Greece and Northern Peloponnese, mostly from an archaeological perspective), page 188:

• The notion that ethne were born of the great tribal migrations of the post-Mycenaean era does a deep disservice not only to our understanding of how and why Greeks conceptualized their own group identities in terms of the past, but also to our contemporary archaeological reconstructions of these regions. It is hard to see how it can be acceptable to consider the Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age transition in Thessaly in terms of the Thessalian migration and expulsion of the Boiotians to Boiotia (Thucydides 1.12), while the archaeology of the Dorians has been discarded as a flawed modern construct.

Mutatis mutandis, I guess this is valid for Macedonians also.

So, regarding literary evidence, we have plenty. A number of Greek myths regarding the Macedonian ethnogenesis, a number of accounts regarding their wars and expansion. These are not accounts that have to do with events millennia before Herodot's or Thucydides' times but a few centuries, in some instances decades. Macedonia was a relatively young kingdom and this was not disputed by anyone. The Macedonians themselves did not, as might have been expected, claim autochthony (as did many other Greeks) nor existence in the Troyan times. At the time of Thucydides, the Macedonians had a history only a few centuries long and as such free of myths and homeric heroes. Thus, it is quite easier to follow their history and exploits through time.

I have to disagree, few centuries with no written record is simply too much and the real history becomes myth. What about the Iliad?

The conflicting myths of Macedonian origin (Makedon is either son of Aiolos or son of Zeus, and starting with 5th century or so we have their Dorian pedigree) are evidence for at best an ambiguous, at worst a made up tradition of their origins. Even the fact that most Greek tribes and cities drew their origins from an eponymous ancestor suggests a fashionable way to construct and present their regional (possibly also ethnic) identity.

1. First, because the history of the Macedonians as I have already mentioned is not obscured by myth as is the history of many other Greek tribes but is given as history by writers we generally respect.

We respect ancient writers when they write about things within their reach. But the early history of Macedonians is obscured by myth, much as the early history of most other Greek tribes (or should I say "tribes").

2. Because there is no literary evidence to the opposite.

Opposite to what? To Macedonian lineage directly from Zeus himself? From Aiolos? Or to their alleged origin from Argos? And even if we'd have only one story, would we rather believe the origin from a god or a hero, instead of anthropological and linguistic insights about the prehistoric societies?

Because there is no archaeological evidence to the opposite. Greek influence in the region is attested in the years before Thucydides, no archaeological evidence points at the Macedonians having been anything but Macedonians, while their influence (archaeologically) is expanding according to the patterns suggested by the ancients.

What archaeological evidence?

Anticipating one of the possible answers, a "Greek" vase proves its owner spoke Greek, as much as today we become Cantonese speakers when we use woks, or Berber speakers when we use tajines.

According to this logic, why would we think that there even was a tribe called Pierians? We have evidence of the Greek Bottiaians, but nothing regarding the Pierians. And of course this expansion we are talking about happened in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, assimilating barbarian populations during these centuries is not something peculiar. The thing is that it is one thing to say that there were no Macedonians, only a Macedonian nobility over barbarian tribes with different names and another to say that some barbarian tribes were slowly or rapidly assimilated by a Macedonian culture and people. What is so peculiar about a Greek tribe assimilating barbarians?

For all I care the Pieirans are the inhabitants of Pieira, regardless if they felt they were part of the same community or not. I'm not into the "tribes from gods/time immemorial" essentialist views.

I'm not sure what 'Macedonian nobility' is supposed to mean (king's philoi?), but what makes sense for me is that Macedonia was a territory settled by Greek speakers in time and not coming in one epic migration ("whole people"). Probably these Greek speakers had the upper social positions, so all non-Greeks were eventually assimilated.