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The systematic study of past human life and culture by the recovery and examination of remaining material evidence, such as graves, buildings, tools, and pottery.
[French archéologie, from New Latin archaeologia, from Greek arkhaiologiā, antiquarian lore : arkhaio-, archaeo- + -logiā, -logy.]
archaeological ar'chae·o·log'i·cal (-ə-lŏj'ĭ-kəl) or ar'chae·o·log'ic adj.For more information on archaeology, visit Britannica.com.
Archaeology is a branch of historical study which has developed its own specialized and highly sophisticated techniques for recovering, dating, and identifying material found largely in the ground, such as skeletons, grave-goods, and the foundation of buildings. For societies which have left little or no literary evidence, it is essential; but it may also be used to correct or modify literary sources. The slightly misleading term ‘industrial archaeology’ has been popularized to describe the recovery and preservation of modern industrial remains, such as mills, railways, mines, pumping-engines, and canals. Marine archaeology is another specialized branch dealing with the recovery of wrecks.
Systematic scientific study of remains and monuments of earlier periods. Revivals of architectural styles usually have an archaeological phase in which accurate recording of extant buildings and details informs architectural design, e.g. Greek Revival.
Literally, ‘the study of ancient things’; the term archaeology has developed and grown to embrace a much wider set of meanings through common usage as the discipline itself has expanded and matured. Walter Taylor writing in 1948 was confidently able to assert that: ‘Archaeology is neither history nor anthropology. As an autonomous discipline, it consists of a method and a set of specialized techniques for the gathering or “production” of cultural information.’
Operationally, archaeology has come to mean the study of past human societies and their environments through the systematic recovery and analysis of material culture or physical remains. The primary aims of the discipline are thus: to recover, record, analyse, and classify archaeological material; to describe and interpret the patterns of human behaviours that led to its creation; and to explain or develop an understanding of the reasons for this behaviour. In Europe and the Old World archaeology has tended to focus on the material remains themselves (sites and monuments), the techniques of recovering material, and theoretical and philosophical underpinnings inherent to achieving its goals. In the New World attention is directed more towards the subject matter and past human societies, and as such is considered one of the four fields of anthropology. In both traditions, the attainment of a broadly based archaeology involves multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary endeavour, and it can fairly be said that the discipline of archaeology is a broad church embracing an increasingly large number of different subdiscipline areas or branches.
Originally, archaeology was a descriptive science, documenting, defining, and classifying everything it came across and mainly concerned with the material itself. This developed into an explanatory discipline where interest focused on understanding the causes behind the patterns and the reasons for what could be observed with a consequent obsession with the processes and the methodology whether at the practical level or the theoretical level. Increasingly, attention is being directed to what archaeologists actually produce, the end result of their labours, with an inevitable swing towards concerns over the nature of discourse and the production of knowledge.
Archaeology is the scientific reconstruction and understanding of prehistoric and historic human behavior from the evidence of material remains. Although the theories archaeologists employ for framing their questions of the past have changed dramatically in the short one hundred years of its existence as an academic discipline, archaeology's primary goals—reconstructing and interpreting past human behavior and culture—have remained essentially unchanged. In the United States, archaeology has traditionally been viewed as one of the four classic subdisciplines of anthropology, along with cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, and linguistics.
While archaeology is also historical in certain aspects, it differs from the study of written and oral history—although it uses both—in two fundamental ways. First, the materials archaeologists generally find in the ground do not indicate directly what to think about them or about the ancient cultures that produced them. Therefore, archaeologists have to make sense of the material remains of the past through analogy to historic cultures, experimentation, inference, behavioral modeling, and good detective work. Second, archaeology is a humanistic discipline as well as a science. As humanists, archaeologists are concerned with how societies function, the evolution of cultural complexity, ethnicity, ideology, power, and a host of other universal questions about human behavior and organization. As scientists, archaeologists develop and construct pictures of the past from limited evidence, just as physicists develop and construct a coherent view of how the natural world works from a limited set of observations. This combination of humanism and science is one of archaeology's many fascinations and strengths as a discipline: it reflects the ingenuity of the modern scientist through its use of technology and rigorous methodology as well as the processes of the modern historian through its focus on reconstructing the past and giving it relevance to the present and future.
American archaeology as a discipline is divided into two types: prehistoric and historic. Prehistoric archaeology is concerned with testing anthropological theories of human behavior and cultural evolution against the archaeological record of societies that left no known written records. Historic archaeology uses archaeological data both to test hypotheses about the operation of historically known societies and to fill in the historical gaps concerning the more mundane, but crucially important, aspects of the day-to-day functioning of those societies.
The History of Archaeology in the United States
The first systematic, well-planned archaeological investigation in the United States was organized by Thomas Jefferson in 1784. Because Jefferson had decided to carefully excavate one of the prehistoric earthen mounds on his property in Virginia in the hope of finding out who built it, he is often considered to be the "father of American archaeology." The fact that he excavated was important, since few individuals in his day undertook such a step. His work was also so carefully done that he was able to observe how soil, refuse, and artifacts had built up over time, and he was thus able to link the known present to the unknown past. And, most important, his excavation was carried out not to find objects but to resolve an archaeological question: Were the Native Americans present in Virginia descendants of those who built the mounds? (Jefferson demonstrated that they were.)
While Jefferson's research was little known until the late nineteenth century, the "mound builder question" did continue to engage the interest of Americans. As a result, several organizations, such as the American Philosophical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Smithsonian Institution, started to try to unravel the mystery. Findings were, however, sporadic and inconclusive. As a result, in 1884, Congress finally dedicated funds to solving the problem through a series of surveys and data collection to be carried out by Cyrus Thomas of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), the first federally appointed archaeologist. The answer was determined within ten years: all of the mounds present in the United States were the products of the ancestors of current Native peoples. The bureau continued to explore the prehistory of the United States over the course of its eighty-seven year existence, culminating in the multivolume Handbook of North American Indians in the late 1970s. The BAE was incorporated into the Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian Institution in 1965.
The resolution of the question of who built the mounds led to a growing public recognition of the need for cooperation between government agencies, academic institutions, and individual researchers to answer questions about America's past. This circumstance was one factor that helped lead to the formation of archaeology as a discipline. In addition, by 1906 the federal government saw the need to protect archaeological sites and artifacts and began creating national monuments and parks as well as passing legislation such as the Antiquities Act.
That archaeology was largely incorporated within anthropology by 1900 was a result of the work of Franz Boas, considered to be the founder of anthropology in the United States. Boas realized at the beginning of the twentieth century that no ethnographic study of the quickly vanishing New World peoples could be complete without a thorough understanding of their present culture, their past culture, their biology, and their language. This realization led to the formation of anthropology as a professional discipline with the creation of the American Anthropological Association in 1902 and to the rapid founding of departments of anthropology at universities like Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, and California at Berkeley. The foundations of academic archaeology in the United States were laid well before Boas, however, with the creation of the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, which mainly concerned itself with Old World archaeology. Anthropological archaeology focusing on America's past was not formalized as a discipline until the founding of the Society for American Archaeology in 1934.
Anthropological archaeology as a distinct discipline has gone through many phases in its efforts to understand the past. At first, scholars were mainly interested in finding rare and unique artifacts. Then, archaeologists focused on describing as much as possible about the past by recording the smallest details of many types of artifacts and architecture. Once accurate dating techniques became widely available, archaeologists began to ask more and more complex questions about the past.
The archaeologist who provided the first dating breakthrough was Alfred V. Kidder. Through his painstaking excavation work at Pecos Pueblo in New Mexico from 1918 to 1928, he was able to demonstrate that archaeologists could better understand chronology by carefully paying attention to two factors: how soil, refuse, and artifacts built up over time at a site, and how artifacts change through time at a site. Especially important was his discovery of the series of changes that the pottery in the northern Southwest had undergone. Once this series of changes was understood, a researcher could generally date a site in the region from the pottery found at it. Kidder's research set the standard for the discipline and is still widely used today.
The problems with exact dating were solved with the advent of dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) in the 1920s by Andrew E. Douglass and radiocarbon dating in the 1940s by Willard F. Libby. Tree-ring dating allowed researchers in the Southwest to obtain the exact dates when certain prehistoric structures were built, while radiocarbon analysis allowed exact dating in a wider variety of contexts and over much greater periods of time. The dating revolution enabled archaeologists to construct highly detailed descriptive temporal sequences for most of the known prehistoric cultures of America. It also opened the door to even bigger questions: When did the first Americans arrive? (The answer turned out to be much earlier than any one had imagined.) When did certain cultures start to develop? When did Native Americans start practicing agriculture? Despite these technical dating advances, the focus of archaeology was still on description rather than explanation.
Nevertheless, the dating revolution signaled the beginning of archaeology as a truly multidisciplinary enterprise, for the new dating techniques were developed by chemists and astronomers, not archaeologists. At present, because researchers have become increasingly interested in how past peoples interacted with and were affected by their surroundings, many archaeological projects now also include biologists, geographers, geologists, and environmental scientists.
The Great Depression helped forge archaeology as a discipline because it generated some of the most massive archaeological projects the United States has ever seen. These projects, carried out by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Projects Administration, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, were intended to keep extremely large numbers of people employed. Such projects required skilled archaeologists with incredible leadership and managerial abilities to run them. Many of the most influential archaeologists of the twentieth century, including James A. Ford, Roger E. Taylor, and Alex D. Krieger, got their start on these projects. Such massive undertakings also signaled the beginning of large-scale government funding of archaeology, which continues to this day.
It was not until the 1960s that many archaeologists finally became frustrated with the discipline's focus on minute description over concrete explanation. No one was talking about why cultures developed in certain ways or why cultural change took place at all. The infusion of fresh anthropological and scientific thinking into archaeology by a new generation of researchers, such as Lewis Binford, Michael Schiffer, and others, catapulted archaeology into a new era, one that was centered on trying to discover the universal processes behind cultural complexity and change. Despite the postmodern, nonscientific leanings of some current researchers, American archaeology remains largely focused on these goals.
Archaeology and the Public
Archaeology, by discovering history firsthand through the welter of objects left behind from past human activity, has raised the consciousness of the American public with respect to this country's cultural heritage. Furthermore, the media in all its forms spends a great deal of time showcasing the discoveries of archaeologists, especially the controversial and exciting ones.
Since the 1970s, archaeologists have been embroiled in public debates about who owns the past and has the right to protect it and interpret it. Native Americans have protested that their histories were being written by other people, that their heritage was being sold in auction houses or put on display in museums, and that their ancestral sites were being destroyed. Ultimately, the historic preservation movement, along with the legal protection of unmarked graves, brought much of America's archaeological heritage under the auspices of the federal and state governments and helped address some Native American concerns. By the 1990s, it was increasingly common for tribes to have their own preservation officers and for archaeologists to plan investigations that addressed both archaeological and indigenous questions and needs.
Archaeology is still struggling with how best to meet the needs of the general public while maintaining its responsibility to preserve the past for the future.
Bibliography
Fagan, Brian M., ed. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Meltzer, David J., Don D. Fowler, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, eds. American Archaeology, Past and Future: A Celebration of the Society for American Archaeology, 1935–1985. Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986.
Renfrew, Colin, and Paul Bahn. Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
Sturtevant, William C., ed. Handbook of North American Indians. vols. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978–1996.
Thomas, David Hurst. Exploring Ancient Native America: An Archaeological Guide. New York: Macmillan, 1994.
Trigger, Bruce G. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Willey, Gordon R., and Jeremy A. Sabloff. A History of American Archaeology. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980.
—Devin Alan White
History of Archaeology
The discipline had its origins in early efforts to collect artistic materials of extinct groups, an endeavor that can be traced back to the 15th cent. in Italy when growing interest in ancient Greece inspired the excavation of Greek sculpture. In the 18th cent. the progress of Greek and Roman archaeology was advanced by Johann Winckelmann and Ennio Visconti and by excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii; in the 19th cent., by the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles. The study of ancient cultures in the Aegean region was stimulated by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann at Troy, and of Arthur Evans at Crete. The work of Martin Nilsson, Alan Wace, and John Pendlebury was also significant in this area, and the decipherment of the Minoan script by Michael Ventris raised new speculations about the early Aegean cultures.
The foundations of Egyptology, a prolific branch of classical archaeology because of the wealth of material preserved in the dry Egyptian climate, were laid by the recovery of the Rosetta Stone (see under Rosetta) and the work of French scholars who accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt. Investigations that have reconstructed the lives and arts of elite segments of ancient Egyptian society and rewritten Egyptian history were carried on in the 19th cent. by Karl Lepsius, Auguste Mariette, and Gaston Maspero, and in the 19th and 20th cent. by W. M. Flinders Petrie, James Breasted, and others.
Interest in the Middle East was stimulated by the work of Edward Robinson (1794–1863) on the geography of the Bible and by the decipherment of a cuneiform inscription of Darius I, which was copied (1835) by Henry Rawlinson from the Behistun rock in Iran. Archaeology in Mesopotamia was notably advanced in the 19th cent. by Jules Oppert, Paul Botta, and Austen Layard and in the 20th cent. by Charles Woolley, Henri Frankfort, and Seton Lloyd. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, beginning in 1947, aroused new interest in biblical studies (see biblical archaeology).
Interest in complex New World cultures was stimulated by the publication by John Stephens of an account of his travels (1839) in Central America, which excited the interest of archaeologists in the Maya. In the 19th cent. studies began of the Toltec and the Aztec in Mexico and of the Inca in South America. In 1926 the discovery of human cultural remains associated with extinct fauna near Folsom, N.Mex. (see Folsom culture), established the substantial depth of prehistory for the New World (see Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the).
Modern Archaeology
In contrast to the antiquarianism of classical archaeology, anthropological archaeology today is concerned with culture history (i.e., the chronology of events and cultural traditions) and the explanation of cultural processes. A variety of different dating techniques, both relative (e.g., stratigraphy) and absolute (e.g., radiocarbon, obsidian hydration, potassium-argon), are used to place events in time. Attempts at explaining evolutionary processes underlying prehistoric remains began with the conclusion advanced in 1832 by the Danish archaeologist Christian Thomsen that cultures may be divided into stages of progress based on the principal materials used for weapons and implements. His three-age theory (the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age) was essentially based on prehistoric materials from Scandinavia and France.
Concerted investigations began in the mid-19th cent. with the stratigraphic excavation of such remains as the lake dwelling, barrow, and kitchen midden. At first the sequences of culture change uncovered in Western Europe were generalized to include all of world history, but improved techniques of field excavation and the expansion of archaeological discoveries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas challenged the universality of rigid classifications. Technological traditions ceased to be regarded as inevitable concomitants of specific cultural stages.
Later interpretations of prehistoric human life emphasize cultural responses to changing demographic and environmental conditions (see ecology). Thus the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods are evaluated in terms of subsistence technologies, and explanations are sought for the causes underlying these transitions. Advances in the recovery and analysis of botanical remains have allowed investigators to model changes in the prehistoric environment with increasing precision, improving the accuracy of such explanations. Paleobotany, the analysis of ancient plant remains, and ethnobotany, the study of the cultural utilization of plants, therefore play a vital role in modern archaeology. Faunal analysis, the recovery and analysis of animal remains such as bone, also plays an important part in the study of prehistoric ecology and subsistence patterns. The careful analysis of botanical and faunal material, combined with advances in the analysis of genetic material, have led to the detailed understanding of the process of the domestication of plants and animals in both the Old and New World. Contemporary archaeologists are also concerned with the emergence of various forms of complex social organization, including chiefdoms, class stratification, and states. Among the most important work done in the mid-20th cent. was that of Louis and Mary Leakey, who located the skeletal remains of humans in East Africa dating back 1.7 million years (see human evolution). In recent years, a number of archaeologists have turned from traditional concerns and have made efforts to reconstruct ideological elements of extinct cultures.
Modern museums with valuable collections include the Metropolitan Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City; the British Museum; the Louvre; national museums in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, rich in remains of the Iron Age; the Vatican and Capitoline museums, Rome; collections from Pompeii and Herculaneum at Naples, Italy; and museums in Athens, Cairo, and Jerusalem. Many universities have established schools and museums of archaeology. Organizations such as the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Geographic Society in the United States promote archaeological studies.
Bibliography
See G. Daniel, A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology (2d ed. 1975); B. G. Trigger, A History of Archaeological Thought (1989); R. J. Wenke, Patterns in Prehistory (3d ed. 1990); G. R. Willey and J. Sabloff, A History of American Archaeology (1990); I. Hodder, Reading the Past (2d ed. 1991).
The modern discipline of interpreting the human past by means of material remains is built upon five centuries of antiquarian and scholarly pursuits. Study of the physical remains of the Greco-Roman past complemented the ardent search for classical texts during the Italian Renaissance, since artifacts and monuments provide a visible, tangible, authoritative (and sometimes alternative) past. Early humanists such as Petrarch and Boccaccio studied coins and inscriptions along with their philological inquiries, and Vitruvius's (first century B.C.E.) treatise on architecture stimulated surveys of architectural remains and the topography of Rome by architects such as Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1471), Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), and Pirro Ligorio (1510–1583). Cyriacus of Ancona (1391–c. 1452) recorded ancient inscriptions and buildings during extensive travels in Italy, Greece, Egypt, and the Levant. In Rome, spectacular chance finds of sculpture like the Laocoön (in 1506) and paintings like those in Nero's Domus Aurea (Golden House, 65–68 C.E.) profoundly affected artists, including Michelangelo and Raphael, and augmented papal collections. A lucrative market in antiquities encouraged random digging that sometimes yielded new information, but excavation for the sake of answering historical questions was slow to develop.
During the eighteenth century the grand tour led to Rome as a primary destination, and the enhanced awareness of antiquities and classical topography stimulated further collecting and shaped fashionable tastes. The typical tour was extended to Naples after the discovery of Herculaneum (1709; excavations began 1738) and Pompeii (1748), investigated initially by destructive tunneling in the search for treasures until more systematic efforts began in 1750 under the direction of Karl Weber (1712–1764). Architects visited the temples of Paestum (Giovanni Battista Piranesi) and Sicily and Greece (James Stuart and Nicholas Revett), recording them as antiquities and as models for contemporary practice, while Johann Joachim Winckelmann's publications shifted antiquarianism toward the discipline of art history. The collections of antiquities that bestowed status on wealthy families eventually became central to national collections in the public museums founded in the nineteenth century.
Antiquarians in England (William Camden, John Aubrey, William Stukeley), France (the Comte de Caylus), and Germany and Scandinavia (Olaus Magnus, Ole Worm) focused on regional histories that could be recovered through close observation, walking surveys, and even some deliberate excavation of henges, megaliths, tumuli, barrows, and urn fields. They sought to merge the distinctive local histories attested by such findings with both the Roman past, using appropriate texts, and biblical antecedents, but biblical chronology constrained their efforts. Nonetheless their meticulous drawings and records and their use of hypotheses based on fieldwork set new standards, and they initiated archaeological investigations of cultures predating the Greco-Roman era.
The documentation of Egyptian antiquities during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt (1798) opened the new field of Egyptology and led to further exploration of the Near East. Soon thereafter developments in stratigraphic geology, paleontology, and especially the theory of evolution led to a more scientific and rigorous archaeology. The antiquarians, however, had successfully applied philological methods to the interpretation of inscriptions and physical remains, and their illustrated publications of Greek and Roman antiquities deeply influenced contemporary art and architecture, interior decoration, and consumer items. Their studies contributed a broader understanding of cultural history, creating taxonomies and typologies still in use and important records of material now lost.
Bibliography
Barkan, Leonard. Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. New Haven, 1999.
Fagan, Brian M., ed. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. New York, 1996.
Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven, 1981.
Salmon, Frank. Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture. Aldershot, U.K., and Burlington, Vt., 2000.
Schnapp, Alain. The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology. London, 1996.
Trigger, Bruce G. A History of Archaeological Thought. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1989.
Watkin, David. Athenian Stuart: Pioneer of the Greek Revival. London and Boston, 1982.
Weiss, Roberto. The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. 2nd ed. Oxford and New York, 1988.
—MARGARET M. MILES
The recovery and study of material objects, such as graves, buildings, tools, artworks, and human remains, to investigate the structure and behavior of past cultures. Archaeologists rely on physical remains as clues to the emergence and development of human societies and civilizations. Anthropologists, by contrast, to interact with living people to study their cultures.
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Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from Greek: αρχαίος, archaios, combining form in Latin archae-, "ancient"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, features, biofacts, and landscapes. Because archaeology's aim it to understand humankind, it is a humanistic endeavor[1].
The goals of archaeology vary, and there is debate as to what its aims, and responsibilities are. Some goals include the documentation and explanation of the origins and development of human cultures, understanding culture history, chronicling cultural evolution, and studying human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies. Archaeologists are aso concerned with the study of methods used in discipline, and the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings underlying the questions archaeologists ask of the past. The tasks of surveying areas in order to find new sites, excavating sites in order to recover cultural remains, classification, analysis, and preservation are all important phases of the archaeological process. These are all important sources of information. Given the broad scope of the discipline there is a great deal of cross-disciplinary research in archaeology. It incorporates history, art history, classics, geography, geology, paleontology, paleozoology, paleoethnobotany, and paleobotany.
In parts of Europe and the Old World, the discipline has its roots in antiquarianism and the study of Latin and Ancient Greek, and so has a natural affinity with the field of history.
In North America archaeology is one of the four sub-fields, or branches of anthropology. The other three branches are cultural anthropology, which focuses on the study of living cultures and societies; linguistics, which studies language, including the origins of language and language groups; and physical anthropology, which includes the study of human evolution and physical and genetic characteristics.
According to American archaeologist Walter Taylor, "archaeology is neither history nor anthropology. As an autonomous discipline, it consists of a method and a set of specialised techniques for the gathering, or 'production' of cultural information"[2].
Often archaeology provides the only means to learn of the existence and behaviors of people in the past. Many thousands of cultures and societies and millions of people have come and gone across the millennia of which there simply is little or no written record - no history - or for which written records may be misrepresentative or incomplete. Writing as it is known and understood today did not exist anywhere in the world until about 3000 years ago, and only spread among a relatively small number of technologically advanced civilizations. In contrast Homo sapiens have existed for at least 200,000 years, and other species of Homo for millions of years (see Human evolution). These civilizations are, not coincidentally, the best-known; they have been open to the inquiry of historians for centuries, while the study of pre-historic cultures has arisen only recently. Even within a civilization that is literate at some levels, many important human practices are not officially recorded. Any knowledge of the formative early years of human civilization - the development of agriculture, cult practices of folk religion, the rise of the first cities - must come from archaeology.
Even where written records do exist, they are invariably incomplete or biased to some extent. In many societies, literacy was
restricted to the elite classes, such as the clergy or the bureaucracy of court or temple. The literacy even of an
aristocracy has sometimes been restricted to deeds and contracts. The interests and
world-view of elites are often quite different from the lives and interests of the rest of the populace. Writings that were
produced by people more representative of the general population were unlikely to find their way into
In addition to their scientific importance, archaeological remains sometimes have political significance to descendants of the people who produced them, monetary value to collectors, or simply strong aesthetic appeal. Many people identify archaeology with the recovery of such aesthetic, religious, political, or economic treasures rather than with the reconstruction of past societies.
This view is often espoused in works of popular fiction, such as Raiders of the Lost
Ark,
The history of archaeology has been one of increasing professionalisation, and the use of an increasing range of techniques, to obtain as much data on the site being examined as possible.
Excavations of ancient monuments and the collection of antiquities have been taking place for thousands of years, but these were mostly for the extraction of valuable or aesthetically pleasing artifacts.
It was only in the 19th century that the systematic study of the past through its physical remains began to be carried out. A notable early development was the founding in Rome in 1829, by Eduard Gerhard and others, of the Institute for Archaeological Correspondence (Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica or Institut für archäologisches Korrespondenz). Archaeological methods were developed by both interested amateurs and professionals, including Augustus Pitt Rivers and William Flinders Petrie.
This process was continued in the 20th century by such people as Mortimer Wheeler, whose highly disciplined approach to excavation greatly improved the quality of evidence that could be obtained.
During the 20th century, the development of urban archaeology and then rescue archaeology have been important factors, as has the development of archaeological science, which has greatly increased the amount of data that it is possible to obtain.
Another branch, archaeoastronomy, is not as well known as archaeology, but deals with the study of ancient or traditional astronomies in cultural context.
This theoretical position was later challenged by processualists but particularism's attention to local trajectories of change is
an approach championed by post-processualists.
There is no single theory of archaeology, and even definitions are disputed. Until the mid-20th century, there was a general consensus that archaeology was closely related to both history and anthropology.
The first major phase in the history of archaeological theory in the United States developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is commonly referred to as cultural, or culture, history. It is best known for its emphasis on historical particularism[3].
In the 1920's in the American Southwest cultural historical archaeology is intimately tied with the direct historical approach[3]. This approach continues to be pursued in the American Southwest, the American Northwest Coast, Mesoamerica, the Andes, Oceania, Siberia, and other world areas there appears to be continuity between living, indigenous populations and archaeological remains past groups. In pursuing the direct historical approach, ethnohistorical and early historical records play an important role in articulating the connections between modern people and the archaeological past. Literary sources can be used in other contexts as well, for example, in the case of Hadrian's Wall.
In the 1960s, a number of young, primarily American archaeologists, such as Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery, rebelled against the paradigms of cultural history[4][5]. They proposed a "New Archaeology", which would be more "scientific" and "anthropological", with hypothesis testing and the scientific method very important parts of what became known as processual archaeology[3].
In the 1980s, a new movement arose led by the British archaeologists Michael Shanks, Christopher Tilley, Daniel Miller, and Ian Hodder. It questioned processualism's appeals to scientific positivism and impartiality and emphasised the importance of a more self-critical theoretical reflexivity[citation needed]. This approach is termed post-processual archaeology. However, this approach has been criticized by processualists as lacking scientific rigor. The validity of both processualism and post-processualism is still under debate.
Historical Processualism is an emerging paradigm that seeks to incorporate a focus on process and post-processual archaeology's emphasis of reflexivity and history[6].
Archaeological theory now borrows from a wide range of influences, including neo-Darwinian evolutionary thought, phenomenology, postmodernism, agency theory, cognitive science, Functionalism, gender-based and Feminist archaeology, and Systems theory.
Survey was not widely practiced in the early days of archaeology. Cultural historians and prior researchers were usually content with discovering the locations of monumental sites from the local populace, and excavating only the plainly visible features there. Gordon Willey pioneered the technique of regional settlement pattern survey in 1949 in the Viru Valley of coastal Peru, and survey of all levels became prominent with the rise of processual archaeology some years later.
Survey work has many benefits if performed as a preliminary exercise to, or even in place of, excavation. It requires relatively little time and expense, because it does not require processing large volumes of soil to search out artifacts. (Nevertheless, surveying a large region or site can be expensive, so archaeologists often employ sampling methods.) It avoids ethical issues (of particular concern to descendant peoples) associated with destroying a site through excavation. It is the only way to gather some forms of information, such as settlement patterns and settlement structure. Survey data are commonly assembled into maps, which may show surface features and/or artifact distribution.
The simplest survey technique is surface survey. It involves combing an area, usually on foot but sometimes with the use of mechanised transport, to search for features or artifacts visible on the surface. Surface survey cannot detect sites or features that are completely buried under earth, or overgrown with vegetation. Surface survey may also include mini-excavation techniques such as augers, corers, and shovel test pits.
Aerial survey is conducted using cameras attached to airplanes, balloons, or even kites. A bird's-eye view is useful for quick mapping of large or complex sites. Aerial photographs are used to document the status of the archaeological dig. Aerial imaging can also detect many things not visible from the surface. Plants growing above a buried man made structure, such as a stone wall, will develop more slowly, while those above other types of features (such as middens) may develop more rapidly. Photographs of ripening grain, which changes colour rapidly at maturation, have revealed buried structures with great precision. Aerial photographs taken at different times of day will help show the outlines of structures by changes in shadows. Aerial survey also employs infrared, ground-penetrating radar wavelengths, and thermography.
Archaeological geophysics can be the most effective way to see beneath the ground. Magnetometers detect minute deviations in the Earth's magnetic field caused by iron artifacts, kilns, some types of stone structures, and even ditches and middens. Devices that measure the electrical resistivity of the soil are also widely used. Archaeological Features whose electrical resistivity contrasts with that of surrounding soils can be detected and mapped. Some archaeological features (such as those composed of stone or brick) have higher resistivity than typical soils , while others (such as organic deposits or unfired clay) tend to have lower resistivity.
Although some archaeologists consider the use of metal detectors to be tantamount to treasure hunting, others deem them an effective tool in archaeological surveying. Examples of formal archaeological use of metal detectors include musketball distribution analysis on English Civil War battlefields, metal distribution analysis prior to excavation of a nineteenth century ship wreck, and service cable location during evaluation. Metal detectorists have also contributed to the archaeological record where they have made detailed records of their results and refrained from raising artifacts from their archaeological context. In the UK, metal detectorists have been solicited for involvement in the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
Regional survey in underwater archaeology uses geophysical or remote sensing devices such as marine magnetometer, side-scan sonar, or sub-bottom sonar.
Modern excavation techniques require that the precise locations of objects and features, known as their provenance or provenience, be recorded. This always involves determining their horizontal locations, and sometimes vertical position as well (also see Primary Laws of Archaeology). Similarly, their association, or relationship with nearby objects and features, needs to be recorded for later analysis. This allows the archaeologist to deduce what artefacts and features were likely used together and which may be from different phases of activity. For example, excavation of a site reveals its stratigraphy; if a site was occupied by a succession of distinct cultures, artefacts from more recent cultures will lie above those from more ancient cultures.
Excavation is the most expensive phase of archaeological research. Also, as a destructive process, it carries ethical concerns. As a result, very few sites are excavated in their entirety. Sampling is even more important in excavation than in survey. It is common for large mechanical equipment, such as backhoes (JCBs), to be used in excavation, especially to remove the topsoil (overburden), though this method is increasingly used with great caution. Following this rather dramatic step, the exposed area is usually hand-cleaned with trowels or hoes to ensure that all features are apparent.
The next task is to form a site plan and then use it to help decide the method of excavation. Features dug into the natural subsoil are normally excavated in portions in order to produce a visible archaeological section for recording. A feature, for example a pit or a ditch, consists of two parts: the cut and the fill. The cut describes the edge of the feature, where the feature meets the natural soil. It is the feature's boundary. The fill is, understandably, what the feature is filled with, and will often appear quite distinct from the natural soil. The cut and fill are given consecutive numbers for recording purposes. Scaled plans and sections of individual features are all drawn on site, black and white and colour photographs of them are taken, and recording sheets are filled in describing the context of each. All this information serves as a permanent record of the now-destroyed archaeology and is used in describing and interpreting the site.
Once artifacts and structures have been excavated, or collected from surface surveys, it is necessary to properly study them, to gain as much data as possible. This process is known as post-excavation analysis, and is normally the most time-consuming part of the archaeological investigation. It is not uncommon for the final excavation reports on major sites to take years to be published.
At its most basic, the artifacts found are cleaned, catalogued and compared to published collections, in order to classify them typologically and to identify other sites with similar artifact assemblages. However, a much more comprehensive range of analytical techniques are available through archaeological science, meaning that artifacts can be dated and their compositions examined. The bones, plants and pollen collected from a site can all be analyzed (using the techniques of zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, and palynology), while any texts can usually be deciphered.
These techniques frequently provide information that would not otherwise be known and therefore contribute greatly to the understanding of a site.
As with most academic disciplines, there are a very large number of archaeological sub-disciplines characterised by a specific method or type of material (e.g. lithic analysis, music, archaeobotany), geographical or chronological focus (e.g. Near Eastern archaeology, Medieval archaeology), other thematic concern (e.g. maritime archaeology, landscape archaeology, battlefield archaeology), or a specific archaeological culture or civilisation (e.g. Egyptology).
Historical archaeology is the study of cultures with some form of writing.
In England, archaeologists have uncovered the long-lost layouts of medieval villages abandoned after the crises of the 14th century and the equally lost layouts of 17th century parterre gardens swept away by a change in fashion. In downtown New York City archaeologists have exhumed the 18th century remains of the African burial ground. Traditional archaeology is viewed as the study of pre-historic human cultures, that is, cultures that existed before the development of writing for that culture.
Ethnoarchaeology is the archaeological study of living people[7][8][9][10][11][12]. The approach gained notoriety during the emphasis on middle range theory that was a feature of the processual movement of the 1960's. Ethnoarchaeology continues to be a vibrant component of post-processual and other current archaeological approaches[13][14][15][16].
Experimental archaeology represents the application of the experimental method to develop more highly controlled observations of processes that create and impact the archaeological record. In the context of the context of the logical positivism of processualism with its goals of improving the scientific rigor of archaeological epistemologies the experimental method gained importance. Experimental techniques remain a crucial component to improving the inferential frameworks for interpreting the archaeological record.
Archaeometry is a field of study that aims to systematize archaeological measurement. It emphasizes the application of analytical techniques from physics, chemistry, and engineering. It is a lively field of research that frequently focuses on the definition of the chemical composition of archaeological remains for source analysis[17].
Cultural resources management (CRM) (also called heritage management in Britain) is a branch of archaeology that accounts for most research done in the United States and much of that in western Europe as well. In the United States, CRM archaeology has been a growing concern since the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 and most of the archaeology done in that country today proceeds from either direct or related requirements of that measure. In the United States, the vast majority of taxpayers, scholars, and politicians believe that CRM has helped to preserve much of that nation's history and prehistory that would have otherwise been lost in the expansion of cities, dams, and highways. Along with other statutes, this mandates that no construction project on public land or involving public funds may damage an unstudied archaeological site.
The application of CRM in the United Kingdom is not limited to government-funded projects. Since 1990 PPG 16 has required planners to consider archaeology as a material consideration in determining applications for new development. As a result, numerous archaeological organisations undertake mitigation work in advance of (or during) construction work in archaeologically sensitive areas, at the developer's expense.
Among the goals of CRM are the identification, preservation, and maintenance of cultural sites on public and private lands, and the removal of culturally valuable materials from areas where they would otherwise be destroyed by human activity, such as proposed construction. This study involves at least a cursory examination to determine whether or not any significant archaeological sites are present in the area affected by the proposed construction. If these do exist, time and money must be allotted for their excavation. If initial survey and/or test excavation indicates the presence of an extraordinarily valuable site, the construction may be prohibited entirely. CRM is a thriving entity, especially in the United States and Europe where archaeologists from private companies and all levels of government engage in the practice of their discipline.
Cultural resources management has, however, been criticized. CRM is conducted by private companies that bid for projects by submitting proposals outlining the work to be done and an expected budget. It is not unheard-of for the agency responsible for the construction to simply choose the proposal that asks for the least funding. CRM archaeologists face considerable time pressure, often being forced to complete their work in a fraction of the time that might be allotted for a purely scholarly endeavour. Compounding the time pressure is the vetting process of site reports which are required (in the US) to be submitted by CRM firms to the appropriate State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). From the SHPO's perspective there is to be no difference between a report submitted by a CRM firm operating under a deadline, and a multi-year academic project. The end result is that for a Cultural Resource Management archaeologist to be successful, they must be able to produce academic quality documents at a corporate world pace.
The annual ratio of open academic archaeology positions (inclusive of Post-Doc, temporary, and non tenure track appointments) to the annual number of archaeology MA/MSc and PhD students is grossly disproportionate. This dearth of academic positions causes a predictable excess of well educated individuals who join the ranks of the following year's crop of non-academically employed archaeologists. Cultural Resource Management, once considered an intellectual backwater for individuals with "strong backs and weak minds"[18] has reaped the benefit of this massive pool of well educated professionals. This results in CRM offices increasingly staffed by advance degreed individuals with a track record of producing scholarly articles but who have the notches on their trowels to show they have been in the trenches as a shovelbum.
Early archaeology was largely an attempt to uncover spectacular artifacts and features, or to explore vast and mysterious
abandoned cities. Such pursuits continue to fascinate the public. Books, films, and video games, such as King Solomon's Mines,
Much thorough and productive research has indeed been conducted in dramatic locales such as Copán and the Valley of the Kings, but the bulk of activities and finds of modern archaeology are not so sensational. Archaeological adventure stories tend to ignore the painstaking work involved in carrying out modern survey, excavation, and data processing. Some archaeologists refer to such portrayals as "pseudoarchaeology".
Archaeology has been portrayed in the mainstream media in sensational ways. This has its advantages and disadvantages. Many practitioners point to the childhood excitement of Indiana Jones films and Tomb Raider games as the inspiration for them to enter the field[citation needed]. Archaeologists are also very much reliant on public support, the question of exactly who they are doing their work for is often discussed[citation needed]. Without a strong public interest in the subject, often sparked by significant finds and celebrity archaeologists, it would be a great deal harder for archaeologists to gain the political and financial support they require.
Motivated by a desire to halt looting, curb pseudoarchaeology, and to secure greater public funding and appreciation for their work, archaeologists are mounting public-outreach campaigns. [1] They seek to stop looting by combatting artifact collectors, and by alerting people who live near archaeological sites of the threat of looting and the danger that it poses to science and their own heritage. Common methods of public outreach include press releases, and the encouragement of school field trips to sites under excavation by professional archaeologists[citation needed].
One audience for archaeologists' work is the pu
