archaeology (ärkēŏl`əjē) [Gr.,=study of beginnings], a branch of anthropology anthropology, classification and analysis of humans and their society, descriptively, culturally, historically, and physically. Its unique contribution to studying the bonds of human social relations has been the distinctive concept of culture .
..... Click the link for more information. that seeks to document and explain continuity and change and similarities and differences among human cultures. Archaeologists work with the material remains of cultures, past and present, providing the only source of information available for past nonliterate societies and supplementing written sources for historical and contemporary groups.

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 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim (yō`hän yōä`khĭm vĭng`kəlmän)
..... Click the link for more information. and Ennio Visconti and by excavations at Herculaneum Herculaneum (hərkyəlā`nēəm), ancient city of S Italy, on the gulf of Naples at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius.
..... Click the link for more information. and Pompeii Pompeii (pŏmpā`, Ital. pōmpĕ`ē), ancient city of S Italy, a port near Naples and at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius.
..... Click the link for more information. ; in the 19th cent., by the acquisition of the Elgin Marbles Elgin Marbles (ĕl`gĭn)
..... Click the link for more information. . The study of ancient cultures in the Aegean region was stimulated by the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann Schliemann, Heinrich (hīn`rĭkh shlē`män), 1822–90, German archaeologist, discoverer of the ruins of Troy .
..... Click the link for more information. at Troy, and of Arthur Evans Evans, Sir Arthur John, 1851–1941, English archaeologist. He was (1884–1908) keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. From 1900 to 1935 he conducted excavations on the Greek island of Crete, principally at Knossos, and there uncovered the remains of the
..... Click the link for more information. 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 Ventris, Michael George Francis, 1922–56, English linguist. Ventris was a student of architecture, but he became interested in the untranslated Mycenaean scripts, particularly Linear B, which was found at Knossos, Pylos, and other sites.
..... Click the link for more information. 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 Rosetta Stone is a granitoid slab inscribed in hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek with identical texts of a decree by a council of priests during the reign of Ptolemy V . Part of a stele dating from 196 B.C.
..... Click the link for more information. ) 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 Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient leather and papyrus scrolls first discovered in 1947 in caves on the NW shore of the Dead Sea. Most of the documents were written or copied between the 1st cent. B.C. and the first half of the 1st cent. A.D.
..... Click the link for more information. , beginning in 1947, aroused new interest in biblical studies (see biblical archaeology 2)) to date pottery is of the greatest importance for the archaeology of Palestine, where spectacular monuments and written material are rarely found. Other important excavations in Palestine were undertaken at Jericho by John Garstang and others, as well as at Megiddo , Samaria ,
..... Click the link for more information. ).

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 Maya (mī`ə, Span. mä`yä)
..... Click the link for more information. . In the 19th cent. studies began of the Toltec Toltec (tŏl`tĕk), ancient civilization of Mexico. The name in Nahuatl means "master builders.
..... Click the link for more information. and the Aztec Aztec (ăz`tĕk'), Indian people dominating central Mexico at the time of the Spanish conquest.
..... Click the link for more information. in Mexico and of the Inca Inca (ĭng`kə), pre-Columbian empire, W South America.
..... Click the link for more information. in South America. In 1926 the discovery of human cultural remains associated with extinct fauna near Folsom, N.Mex. (see Folsom culture Folsom culture (fŏl`səm, fŭl`–)
..... Click the link for more information. ), established the substantial depth of prehistory for the New World (see Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the, study of the origins of the aboriginal peoples of the Americas. Archaeologists believe humans had entered and occupied much of the Americas by the end of the Pleistocene epoch , but the date of their original entry into the
..... Click the link for more information. ).

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 dating, the determination of the age of an object, of a natural phenomenon, or of a series of events. There are two basic types of dating methods, relative and absolute.
..... Click the link for more information. techniques, both relative (e.g., stratigraphy stratigraphy, branch of geology specifically concerned with the arrangement of layered rocks (see stratification ). Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition, which states that in a normal sequence of rock layers the youngest is on top and the oldest on the
..... Click the link for more information. ) 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 Bronze Age, period in the development of technology when metals were first used regularly in the manufacture of tools and weapons. Pure copper and bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, were used indiscriminately at first; this early period is sometimes called the
..... Click the link for more information. , and Iron Age Iron Age, period in the development of industry that begins with the general use of iron and continues into modern times. In Asia, Egypt, and Europe it was preceded by the Bronze Age . It did not begin in the Americas until the coming of the Europeans.
..... Click the link for more information. ) 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 lake dwelling, prehistoric habitation built over the shallow waters of a lake shore or a marsh, usually erected on pile-supported platforms, but sometimes on artificial mounds.
..... Click the link for more information. , barrow barrow, in archaeology, a burial mound. Earth and stone or timber are the usual construction materials; in parts of SE Asia stone and brick have entirely replaced earth. A barrow built primarily of stone is often called a cairn .
..... Click the link for more information. , and kitchen midden kitchen midden, refuse heap left by a prehistoric settlement; more specifically, a deposit consisting primarily of discarded shell and related cultural material in coastal environments.
..... Click the link for more information. . 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 ecology, study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another. The study of an individual organism or a single species is termed autecology; the study of groups of organisms is called synecology.
..... Click the link for more information. ). Thus the Paleolithic Paleolithic period (pā'lēəlĭth`ĭk, –lēō–, păl'–) or
..... Click the link for more information. , Mesolithic Mesolithic period (mĕz'əlĭth`ĭk) or Middle Stone Age,
..... Click the link for more information. , and Neolithic periods Neolithic period or New Stone Age. The term neolithic is used, especially in archaeology and anthropology, to designate a stage of cultural evolution or technological development characterized by the use of stone tools, the existence of
..... Click the link for more information. 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 Leakey, Louis Seymour Bazett (băz`ət, lē`kē), 1903–72, British archaeologist and anthropologist of E Africa, b.
..... Click the link for more information. , who located the skeletal remains of humans in East Africa dating back 1.7 million years (see human evolution human evolution, theory of the origins of the human species, Homo sapiens. Modern understanding of human origins is derived largely from the findings of paleontology , anthropology , and genetics , and involves the process of natural selection (see Darwinism ).
..... Click the link for more information. ). 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).

archaeology

Scientific study of material remains of past human life and activities. These include human artifacts from the very earliest stone tools to the man-made objects that are buried or thrown away in the present day. Archaeological investigations are a principal source of modern knowledge of prehistoric, ancient, and extinct cultures. The field emerged as an academic discipline in the late 19th century, following centuries of haphazard antiquarian collecting. Among the archaeologist's principal activities are the location, surveying, and mapping of sites and the excavation, classification, dating, and interpretation of materials to place them in historical context. Major subfields include classical archaeology, the study of ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern civilizations; prehistoric archaeology, or general archaeology; and historical archaeology, the study of historic-period remains to augment the written record. See also anthropology; coin collecting; stone-tool industry.

archaeology, archeology

the study of man's past by scientific analysis of the material remains of his cultures
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