Archeology

Origins and definition

In the “Old world”, archeology tended to concentrate on the study of the physical remainders, the methods employed to put them at the day and the theoretical and philosophical bases underlying these objectives.

The discipline takes its source in the world of the Antiquaires and in the study of the Latin and the old Greek , which naturally registers it in the field of study of the history.

In the United States and in a growing number of other areas of the world, archeology is generally reserved for the study of the human society and is regarded as one of the four branches of the Anthropologie. The other branches of anthropology supplement the results of the archeology in a holistic way . These branches are:

the Ethnology, which studies dimensions behavioral, symbolic systems, and material of the culture;
the Linguistic , which studies the language, including the origins of the language and the groups of language;
the Physical anthropology, which includes the study of the evolution and the physical characteristics and Génétique S of the mankind.

Other disciplines also supplement archeology, like the Paléontologie, the Paléozoologie, the paleo-ethnobotanic , the Paléobotanique, the Géographie, the Géologie, the Histoire of art and the Philologie.

Archeology was described as an art which makes sure the contest of sciences to clarify the social sciences. The American archeologist affirmed that “archeology is neither the history nor anthropology. Like disciplines autonomous, it consists of a method and a whole of specialized techniques intended to gather, or “to produce” cultural information”.

Archeology seeks to include/understand the human culture through its material vestiges whatever the period concerned. In England, the archeologists thus put at the day the sites forgotten for a long time of the abandoned medieval villages after the crises of the 14th century like those of the gardens of the 17th century évincés by a change of mode. In the middle of New York, archeologists exhumed the remainders of one and dating from and 18th century.

Traditional archeology is regarded as the study of the prehistoric cultures , cultures which existed before the appearance of the writing. Historical archeology is the study of the cultures which developed forms of writing.

When the study relates to relatively recent cultures, observed and studied by Western researchers, archeology is then closely related to the Ethnographie. It is the case in most of North America, of Oceania, of Siberia and all the areas where archeology merges with the study of alive traditions of the cultures in questions. The Homme of Kennewick thus provides the example of an archaeological subject of study in interaction with the modern culture and of the current concerns. At the time of the study of groups which controlled the writing or which had neighbors which controlled it, history and archeology are supplemented to allow a broader comprehension of the total cultural context, and the study of the Hadrian's Wall provides us an example of it.

Importance and validity of application

Archeology often represents the only means of knowing the lifestyle and the behaviors of the groups of the last ones. Thousands of cultures and companies, million people followed one another during the millenia, for which there does not exist any written testimony - no history - or almost. In certain cases, the texts can be incomplete or can deform reality.

The writing such as it today is known appeared only approximately 5.000 years ago and it was used only by some technologically advanced civilizations. It is of course not by chance that these civilizations are relatively well-known: they were the subject of research on behalf of the Historien S since centuries, while the prehistoric cultures are studied only since the 19th century. But even in the case of a civilization using the writing, of many important human practices are not recorded. All that relates to the elements founders of civilization - the development of agriculture, the cultural practices, the first cities - could be known only by archeology. Even when written testimonys exist, they systematically incomplete or are more or less skewed. In many companies, only the members of a social elite were taught reading and writing, like the Clergé. The written documents of the Aristocratie are often limited to bureaucratic texts concerning the court or the temples, even to notarial acts or contracts. The interests and the vision of the world of the elite are often relatively far away from the life and the concerns of the remainder of the population. The writings produced by people more representative of the whole of the population had little chance to lead in the Bibliothèque S and to be preserved for the posterity there. Written testimonys thus tend to reflect the party taken, the ideas, the values and possibly the frauds of a small number of individuals, generally corresponding to a negligible fraction of the population. It is impossible to trust with the writings like only information source. The material vestiges are closer to a reliable representation of the company, even if they pose other problems of representativeness such as the oblique of sampling or the differential conservation.

Beyond their scientific importance, the archaeological vestiges can have a political significance for the descendants of the groups which produced them, a material value for the collectors or simply a strong esthetic load. With the eyes of the general public, which very often ignores the legal framework of the matter (right of archeology, codes inheritance), archeology is often associated with a search for such treasures esthetic, religious, political or economic rather than with a reconstitution of the lifestyles of the last companies. This point of view is frequently consolidated in works of fiction such as Indiana Jones and the Adventurers of the lost arch , the Mummy or the Mines of the king Solomon , extremely fortunately very far away from the effective concerns of modern archeology.

Methods of studies

History

The history of archeology is marked by an increasing professionalisation like by the use of an increasingly broad range of techniques in order to obtaining the most possible data of the studied sites.

The excavations of old monuments and the collection of antiquities exists since millenia but they primarily aimed at the setting at the day of vestiges presenting a commercial value or esthetic.

It is only as from the 19th century that began the systematic study from passed through the material vestiges. The foundation of the archaeological Institute of correspondence ( Istituto di corrispondenza archeologica ) in Rome in 1829, by Eduard Gerhard and others, is a big step. The methods of archeology were developed at the same time by interested amateurs and professionals, of which Augustus Pitt Rivers and William Flinders Petrie.

This process continued at the 20th century by people such as Mortimer Wheeler, whose strongly disciplined approach of the excavation contributed to improve considerably quality of archaeological documentation.

In prehistoric archeology, specific methods of recording or excavation were developed in particular by Georges Laplace ^, or André Leroi-Gourhan.

The development of the urban archeology then of the preventive Archéologie played a big role, just like that of the Archéométrie, which strongly increased the quantity of data which it is possible to obtain.

Archeology

Origins and definition

Importance and validity of application

Methods of studies

History

Archaeological theories

Archeology and its echo in the public

Diversity of the archaeological discoveries