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Archaeology
Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from Greek: αρχαίος, archaios, combining
form in Latin archae-, "ancient"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the study of
human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material
remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts,
human remains, and landscapes.
The goals of archaeology are to document and explain the origins and development
of human culture, understand culture history, chronicle cultural evolution, and
study human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies.
It is considered, in North America, to be one of the four sub-fields of
anthropology.
Origins and definition
Archaeology is the study of human culture through material remains from humans
in the past. In the Old World, archaeology has tended to focus on the study of
physical remains, the methods used in recovering them and the theoretical and
philosophical underpinnings in achieving the subject's goals. The discipline's
roots in antiquarianism and the study of Latin and Ancient Greek provided it
with a natural affinity with the field of history. In the United States and,
increasingly, in other parts of the world, archaeology is more commonly devoted
to the study of human societies and is regarded as one of the four branches of
anthropology. The other three branches are cultural anthropology, which studies
behavioural, symbolic, and material dimensions of culture; 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. Other disciplines also supplement archaeology,
including history, art history, classics, geography, geology, paleontology,
paleozoology, paleoethnobotany, and paleobotany. Archaeology has been described
as a craft that enlists the sciences to illuminate the humanities.[citation
needed] According to American archaeologist Walter Taylor in A Study of
Archeology (American Anthropological Association 1948), "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".
Archaeology is an approach to understanding human culture through its material
remains regardless of chronology. 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. Historical
archaeology is the study of cultures with some form of writing.Learn
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Archaeology, Careers Archaeology, Information Archaeology, Information
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Higher Studies in Archaeology. |
