Archaeology For Dummies E-Book

Nancy Marie White

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 634

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2008

Beschreibung

An objective guide to this fascinating science of history and culture Archaeology continually makes headlines--from recent discoveries like the frozen Copper-Age man in the Italian Alps to the newest dating of the first people in America at over 14,0000 years ago. Archaeology For Dummies offers a fascinating look at this intriguing field, taking readers on-site and revealing little-known details about some of the world's greatest archaeological discoveries. It explores how archaeology attempts to uncover the lives of our ancestors, examining historical dig sites around the world and explaining theories about ancient human societies. The guide also offers helpful information for readers who want to participate in an excavation themselves, as well as tips for getting the best training and where to look for jobs.

Leseprobe

Archaeology For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

Archaeology versus archeology

Dates

Measurements

Anthropology

What you’re not to read

My Assumptions

How This Book Is Organized

Part I: Archaeology: Seeing Past People Today

Part II: Archaeological Fieldwork: The Adventure Begins!

Part III: After the Dig: You’ve Only Just Begun

Part IV: Archaeology Reconstructs the Whole Human Past

Part V: Archaeology Is for Everyone

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Icons Used in the Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I: Archaeology: Seeing Past People Today

Chapter 1: What Archaeology Is

So What Is Archaeology Anyway?

The method: It’s detective work

The goal: Understand people

The Nature of Archaeological Evidence

Artifacts

Ecofacts

Features

Sites

How Archaeological Sites Form

Cultural processes

Natural processes

How Archaeology Became a Modern Science

Early diggers

Nineteenth-century archaeology

The early 20th century: Fabulous finds and academic advances

Late 20th-century archaeology

Modern 21st-century archaeology

Archaeology in the field

Archaeology in the lab

Archaeology’s human story

Archaeology in the public sphere

Chapter 2: What Archaeology Isn’t and Why That’s Important

Dinosaurs, Fossils, and Rocks: Not What Archaeology Is About

Some fossils but no dinos

Understanding how rock studies aid archaeology

Hollywood Stereotypes: Time for a Dose of Reality

The real archaeologists versus the movie heroes

Real past people versus movie savages with dinosaurs

Treasure Hunting and Looting: Not the Goals of Archaeology

Early archaeology and looting: The Elgin marbles

Give a hoot: Don’t loot (or trade in antiquities)

Archaeologists Aren’t Always Digging

Archaeology Isn’t Necessarily Exotic; It’s Real Work

Archaeology is about people

A case study: Archaeology of modern garbage

Chapter 3: So You Want to Do Archaeology? What Kind?

Archaeology as Anthropology

The Scientific and the Humanistic in Archaeology

Different Fields for a Plethora of Purposes and Places

Regional specialties: Digging in one place

Temporal specialties: Digging within one time period

Expertise in specific artifacts or site types

Archaeological Specialties by Setting, Goals, and Techniques

Prehistoric and historic archaeology

Underwater archaeology: Difficult and expensive

Classical archaeology: All those statues!

Forensic archaeology

Historic preservation, heritage, and community archaeology

Cultural resources management (CRM) and contract archaeology

Museum archaeology and collections management

Avocational and educational archaeology

Other kinds of archaeology

Special Studies Related to Archaeology

Zooarchaeology: Animal remains

Paleoethnobotany: Plant remains

Archaeometry: Archaeological sciences

What Kind of Archaeology Do You Want to Do?

Chapter 4: How Archaeologists Think and Work

How an Archaeological Investigation Begins

Determining your research goals

Coming up with a research design

Planning the archaeological project

How Archaeologists Use Science

Using the scientific method and testing hypotheses

Making assumptions about the past

Case Study: The Mystery Mounds in the Florida Jungle

Discovering a new mound

Eliminating impossible interpretations

Researching remaining possibilities

Finding historical answers

Using the discoveries for modern applications

Part II: Archaeological Fieldwork: The Adventure Begins!

Chapter 5: Supplies and Equipment You Need

What to Pack for Fieldwork

Digging and recording supplies

Safety and health items

Personal needs

Dress requirements

Equipment for the Survey or Dig

Supplies for recording everything you find

Supplies for digging

Larger equipment

Knowledge and Skills You Need

Helpful knowledge and educational background

Psychological requirements for archaeology

Bringing the best attitude for adventure

Chapter 6: Archaeological Survey: Finding Where to Dig

What Is a Survey?

Doing Background Work for Archaeological Survey

Documentary sources

Oral history and local informants

Remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS)

Preparing for Archaeological Fieldwork

Assembling a crew and assessing field conditions

Gathering survey equipment

Using what’s already known to plan field survey

Doing the Field Survey

Doing a surface investigation

Doing subsurface survey

Sampling in archaeological survey

Recording where stuff comes from: Provenience

Recording, photographing, and interviewing

Cataloguing and caring for your finds

Planning for adverse field situations

Deciding when to get outside help

Writing Up Your Survey Findings

Writing what you’ve found

Making a contribution to archaeological knowledge

Chapter 7: The Archaeological Dig

Questions to Ask Before You Dig

Does your reason for digging justify destroying the site?

So why are you digging?

Have you organized your research?

Are you doing test excavation or larger-scale data recovery?

Have you considered remote sensing?

Are you reconstructing or restoring?

Planning the Archaeological Excavation

Deciding how many excavations and how deep

Knowing when to stop

Considering safety

Using Old Archaeological Technology and the Newest Equipment Too

Basic digging tools

Mapping equipment

Bigger equipment

Heavy earth-moving equipment

Finally! Doing the Archaeological Excavation

Setting up a dig and mapping it

Digging strata and levels

Shoveling and troweling

Recording archaeological features

Measuring

Screening

Recovering remains with flotation

Taking soil samples

Doing special digs: Mounds, buildings, caves, and more

Ending the dig

Recording Excavation Information and Finds

Provenience

Field forms and notes

Photography and computer data entry

Procedures for unusual finds

Chapter 8: Laws, Ethics, and Safety in Field Archaeology

Gathering Information from Landowners, Residents, and Officials

Know the laws about digging

Know the neighborhood where you’re digging

Field Ethics and Local Communities

Positive community interaction

Publicity

Respecting Native Americans and Other Descendant Communities

Respect for human remains

When you may need to stop digging

Dealing with Dangerous Archaeological Field Conditions

Tools and careless crew members

Hazards of Mother Nature

Part III: After the Dig: You’ve Only Just Begun

Chapter 9: Processing Excavated Materials in the Laboratory

Setting Up an Archaeology Lab

Basic archaeology lab needs

Fancier equipment: Magnifiers, measurers, music

A lab crew with tons of patience

Processing Excavated Materials

Cleaning artifacts and ecofacts

Conserving or restoring the materials

Examining the soil samples

Cataloguing and numbering

Classifying artifacts by types

Classifying ecofacts and other materials

Weighing, measuring, and other recording

Sorting flotation remains

Processing Information and Paperwork

Maps

Other records

Preliminary documentation

Curation and Collections Management

Taking care of your collections: They’re forever

The ethics of collections management

Chapter 10: Studying and Analyzing What You’ve Excavated

Documenting How Finds Occur in Space and Time

Making charts of finds

Making discoveries during the laboratory analysis

Putting your finds onto your map

Analyzing Specific Materials: Stone, Ceramics, Bone, and Metal

Basic analyses

Use wear and residues on artifacts

What artifacts are made of

Special Studies of Archaeological Finds

Animal remains: Zooarchaeology

Plant remains: Paleoethnobotany

Human bones, chemistry, and DNA

Getting a Date in Archaeology

What’s datable and what’s not

Indirect and direct dating

Relative dating

Getting a calendar date

Other chronometric dating methods

When You Need Help

Chapter 11: Reconstructing the Past: Piecing Together the Puzzles

Reporting on Your Investigation

Producing your report

Sharing your work

Telling the Story of What You’ve Found

Describing what happened based on the evidence

Detailing how people lived, got stuff, and settled the land

Describing social order, family, gender, and politics in the past

Understanding past beliefs and values

Using Analogy with Known Human Behavior

Ethnographic analogy: Using anthropological and historical data

Ethnoarchaeology: Archaeologists doing ethnography

Experimental archaeology: Replicating ancient technologies

Relating the archaeological story to the present

Using Archaeological Theories to Interpret Your Discoveries

Culture history: What, when, where

Processual archaeology: How, maybe why

Postprocessual archaeology: Finding meaning and avoiding bias

Part IV: Archaeology Reconstructs the Whole Human Past

Chapter 12: Early Humans: Original Cave Guys & Gals

Our Family Tree

The Lower Paleolithic Era: The Earliest People and Culture

Oldest archaeological finds

The lives of early humans

Early society: Still a lot of mystery

The Later Lower Paleolithic Era: Moving Out of Africa

Lower Paleolithic artifacts

Lower Paleolithic sites

Lower Paleolithic ways of life

The Middle Paleolithic Era

Neanderthals

Middle Paleolithic artifacts and sites

Neanderthal lifeways

The Upper Paleolithic Era: Modern Humans Populate the World

Upper Paleolithic artifacts

Upper Paleolithic art

Upper Paleolithic lifeways: People on the move

Chapter 13: The Last 10,000 Years: Climate Change and Early Food Production

The Foraging Life: The First Global Warming, 10,000 B.C.

Old World Mesolithic hunter–gatherers

New World Archaic cultures

Revolution in the New Stone Age: Growing Food

Old World plants and animals (pasta, milk, wine)

New World plants and animals (corn, chocolate, few animals)

The changes brought on by food production

Farming Takes Off in the Old World

The Middle East: Early gardeners and herders

Africa

South Asia

East Asia

Europe

Food Production in North and South America

Prehistoric North American farmers

Early South American farmers

Later Prehistory: Metal and Megaliths

The beginnings of metalworking

The rise of megaliths

Chapter 14: Ancient States

What Archaeologists Mean by Civilization

What Archaeology Brings to the Study of Ancient Civilization

The search for historic records

The problem of looting

Excavating the Earliest True States

Mesopotamia (Iraq): Sumerian civilization

Egypt: Pyramids and pharaohs

Indus Valley: Peaceful civilization?

China: Vast empire

Mesoamerica: Olmec, Maya, and Aztec civilizations

South American civilizations: Mountains, desert, and jungle

Reasons for Civilization

Later Ancient States and Early Historic Times

Greece

Rome

Biblical sites

Other prehistoric Asian and African states

Chapter 15: Historic Archaeology: Reinterpreting the More Recent Past

What Historic Archaeology Shows That History Can’t

Archaeology and the biases of history

The people without history

People and objects with lots of history

Historical Archaeology’s Methods and Finds

Investigation methods and questions

The approach to historic artifacts

Underwater historic sites

Classical Archaeology

Medieval Archaeology

Archaeology of Invasion and Colonization

An abandoned Spanish town in the Americas

Spanish missions in the U.S. Southeast

A French fort in Alabama

Investigating Famous Figures

The Archaeology of Slavery

Excavating Daily Life, Historic Industry, and the Military

Daily life in society

Industrial archaeology

Military and battlefield archaeology

Understanding Modern Society and Behavior from Artifacts

Forensic archaeology

Radios and cars as artifacts

Archaeology of cellphones and communication

Archaeology of everyday items and technologies

Part V: Archaeology Is for Everyone

Chapter 16: The Uses of Archaeological Findings

All Archaeology Is Public Archaeology

What public archaeology is

How public archaeology is funded and publicized

Recognizing Different Stakeholders in the Past

Digging up someone’s ancestors and traditions

Identifying people’s heritage

Finding the excluded past

Archaeology’s Political Nature

Finding out who’s interested

Taking authenticity and value into account

Changing meanings of the past

Collecting, Looting, and Selling Artifacts

Ethical collectors

Treasure hunting and looting

Antiquities markets and laws

Relating the Archaeological Story to the Present

Saving the past for the future

Telling the human drama of the past

Enjoying the connection with the past

Practical Applications of Archaeology

Human-environment interaction

The development and use of past technologies

Chapter 17: How You Can Explore Archaeology

Taking Archaeology Courses

Lectures and short classes

College archaeology courses

Joining Archaeological Associations

From international to local groups

Professional groups

Public Programs and Teacher Training

Volunteering or Joining Archaeological Digs and Laboratories

Joining a local dig

Joining digs across the country or abroad

Becoming a Professional Archaeologist

Education requirements

Job opportunities and realities

Other qualities needed to be a professional archaeologist

Chapter 18: Controversies and Sensational Findings

The Ice Man Cometh (and Other Archaeological Wonders)

The Ice Man

More famous frozen finds

Cannibalism in the U.S. Southwest

Who Are They, and Where Did They Come From: Disputed Ancient Peoples and Processes

Ancient Southeast Asian “hobbits”

Identity of the Celts

How the Americas were first discovered

The later “discovery” of America

How the far Pacific was discovered

Controversies among Archaeologists and Others

Machu Picchu remains claimed by Peru

Miami Circle site

Part VI: The Part of Tens

Chapter 19: Ten-Plus Archaeological Places to Visit in the U.S.

Alabama: Moundville Archaeological Park

Arkansas: Toltec Mounds Archaeological State Park

Colorado: Mesa Verde National Park

Georgia: Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site

Florida: Mission San Luis de Apalachee

Illinois: Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site

Louisiana: Poverty Point State Historic Site

Maryland: St. Mary’s City

New Mexico: Chaco Culture National Historic Park

Ohio: Hopewell Culture National Historical Park

Virginia: Historic Jamestown

Wisconsin: Aztalan State Park

A Few Museums You Should Visit

Connecticut: Mashantucket Pequot Museum

New York: American Museum of Natural History

Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

Chapter 20: More Than Ten Archaeological Sites to Visit Outside the United States

Cambodia: Angkor Archaeological Park

Canada: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

Polynesia (Chile): Easter Island

China: Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

France: Lascaux Cave II and Paleolithic Art

Jordan: Petra

Malaysia (Borneo): Niah Cave

Malta: Megalithic Monuments

Mexico: Teotihuacan, Maya, and El Tajín

Teotihuacan

Maya Ruins: Palenque and Chichén Itzá

El Tajín

Peru: Machu Picchu

Zimbabwe: Great Zimbabwe

Chapter 21: Ten Fun Archaeological Experiences

Reading Archaeology in Fiction

Reading Archaeology in Nonfiction

Watching Movies about Archaeology

Watching Movies about Prehistoric People

Attending a Lecture and Exhibit

Planning Your Vacation to See Archaeology

Planning Your Vacation to Do Archaeology

Being a Museum Volunteer

Trying Out Archaeological Field School

Being an Archaeological Donor

Appendix: Timeline of Human History and Sites Map

Archaeology For Dummies®

by Nancy Marie White

Archaeology For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, 317-572-3447, fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley Publishing logo, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, A Reference for the Rest of Us!, The Dummies Way, Dummies Daily, The Fun and Easy Way, Dummies.com and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.

For general information on our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

For technical support, please visit www.wiley.com/techsupport.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008935270

ISBN: 978-0-470-33732-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Being an archaeologist was something Nancy Marie White wanted to do from the time she learned how to spell the word as a kid. She was interested in Native American cultures, outdoor adventure, and the romance of finding ancient things and lost knowledge. After earning a BA in history, she went to live in Mexico, where she saw that studying archaeology and the rest of anthropology would lead to a fascinating life. She earned a PhD from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (home of rock and roll), and is now professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and a long-time member of the Register of Professional Archaeologists.

White’s research includes finding and sometimes excavating sites of all time periods. She’s currently studying how late prehistoric agricultural societies in the U.S. Southeast became complex and why they had no beer. She also investigates campsites, villages, and mounds of earlier Native American hunter-gatherers, fishers, and gardeners, and lost towns and forts inhabited by historic Indians, European-Americans, and African-Americans. Her one kid, Tony, spent an entire childhood camping in the woods and digging, and now studies engineering. White tries to travel often in order to go somewhere different to visit archaeology. She really believes in public archaeology and the potential of the distant past to show us a lot that might be useful in the modern world.

Author’s Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to many people who helped with this book in different ways. Archaeologists Lee Hutchinson and Jeff Du Vernay read the manuscript and offered great comments. Malaysian social scientist Cheng Sim Hew asked good questions about archaeology’s value to society. Help with figures, text, ideas, and details came from Robbie Baer, Bill Bingham, Susan Harp, Ned Jenkins, Roy Larick, Erin Kimmerle, Rochelle Marrinan, Erin Murtha-Celii, John O’Hear, Rob Tykot, and Rich Weinstein. Wiley editors Michael Lewis, Megan Knoll, and Tim Gallan are superb. Offspring Anthony Orlando White and parent Adela Dodero White read and commented upon everything and provided constant encouragement and laughs.

Thanks also to all archaeologists and other scientists whose work I’ve described here; I apologize for not being able to cite you by name. I realize I’ve taken on a huge responsibility in representing the entirety of the archaeological profession and the specific work of thousands of colleagues around the world in a single (and, I’m hoping, user-friendly) volume. Perhaps readers will let me know about any errors. After all, archaeology is a continual process of finding out new information about old things!

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our Dummies online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions, Editorial, and Media Development

Senior Project Editor: Tim Gallan

Acquisitions Editor: Michael Lewis

Copy Editor: Megan Knoll

Assistant Editor: Erin Calligan Mooney

Art Coordinator: Alicia B. South

Technical Editor: Lee Hutchinson

Editorial Manager: Michelle Hacker

Editorial Assistants: Joe Niesen, Jennette ElNaggar and David Lutton

Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Patrick Redmond

Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis, Melissa K. Jester, Christin Swinford, Christine Williams

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Caitie Kelly and Penny Stuart

Indexer: WordCo Indexing Services

Publishing and Editorial for Consumer Dummies

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher, Consumer Dummies

Joyce Pepple, Acquisitions Director, Consumer Dummies

Kristin Ferguson-Wagstaffe, Product Development Director, Consumer Dummies

Ensley Eikenburg, Associate Publisher, Travel

Kelly Regan, Editorial Director, Travel

Publishing for Technology Dummies

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher, Dummies Technology/General User

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Introduction

Archaeology is exciting adventure and discovery. It’s also sometimes horribly misunderstood and wrongly stereotyped. Many well-educated people still think that archaeology is bones, dinosaurs, or fossils, but it’s none of these. Archaeological remains are things humans left — artifacts or garbage stains in the soil or ruins of huts or palaces. Others think archaeology must mean only Egyptian temples or Roman ruins, but archaeology is everywhere that humans have been, including your own back yard and even the moon.

Today archaeology is a big part of popular culture, in movies, computer games and the news. Authors write about everything from archaeology’s role in science fiction to its practical use in the modern world. More professional archaeologists, more History Channel specials on the ancient past, and more opportunities to see and participate in archaeology now exist than ever before.

This book aims to explore the science, describe the thrills, and show you what archaeology is all about, whether you want to get involved via the armchair or in digging.

About This Book

I’ve tried to pack a lot into this book to give you at least a little taste of many things in the smorgasbord of archaeological topics, including ways that archaeology affects your own life that you may not have thought of before.

Here’s what you’ll see in these pages:

What archaeology really is (and misunderstandings about what it isn’t).

The many different kinds of archaeology out there, each of which investigates different things.

How archaeologists think and how they use scientific method to reconstruct the past from the material record.

How to do archaeological fieldwork — survey and excavation.

The huge amount of work you need to do after fieldwork for processing and analysis of the stuff you dig up.

The story of the whole human career — from the first humans through modern times — known only or mostly from archaeology.

Guides to help you understand, visit, and do archaeology.

I aim in this book to demystify archaeology, to tell you what it is, how it’s done, where you can do it, and what you can learn from it about humanity. You should be able to open to any chapter and see the topic of choice, and you can also find everything on the topic by looking in the index.

Conventions Used in This Book

Here are a few little things to keep in mind as you read this book, to avoid confusion over some details.

Archaeology versus archeology

Both spellings of the word are fine. Usually you see the -aeo version because most people, including my editors and publisher, think it’s classier! But the U.S. federal government (which, in official documents, always calls itself “Federal”), and other entities, have spelling rules insisting on the -eo version. Once, when reporting a dig on federal land, I spelled the title “Archaeology.” Officials told me that (among other revisions) I had to take the a out, so I redid the title as “Rchaeology.” For some reason, they weren’t amused.

Dates

Reading about past times, you see dates given in various ways. In this book, I use the terms B.C. (“before Christ” — about 2,000 years ago and earlier) and A.D. (Latin words anno domini, translating to “year of our Lord” and actually meaning after the birth of Christ — so there is no A.D. 0). A.D. is always written before the number to make sense in Latin. These are still the most commonly used ways of writing dates in English. Some writers use B.C.E (“before the common era” or “before the Christian era”) and C.E. (“common era”) to mean the same things but without religious overtones. Another notation is B.P., meaning “before the present”; to change B.C. dates to B.P. dates, just add 2,000 years.

Measurements

Nearly all modern archaeology uses the metric system because that system is internationally understood and the world standard for science. Exceptions to this rule may pop up when you’re mapping and digging historic sites where objects may have originally been deliberately constructed in feet and inches, so measuring them in the same units makes more sense.

You may not be used to metric measurements, so in this book I sometimes give them in feet and inches. But just remember that an inch is about 21⁄2 centimeters (cm), a meter (m) is a little over a yard, and about 30 centimeters is a foot. If you do end up switching to the metric system for archaeology, you may never go back!

Anthropology

Most of the archaeology done today is part of anthropology, the social science that studies humans in all their biological and cultural aspects. Some archaeology falls under the heading of classics or some other field (as I describe in Chapter 3). In this book, I try to give you a little of all kinds of archaeology while emphasizing that archaeological findings aren’t just cool artifacts or ancient treasures but rather clues to exploring human behavior.

What you’re not to read

You don’t have to read the sidebars (the text in gray boxes) — that material is interesting but tangential. You don’t have to read text that’s flagged by the Technical Stuff icon either. After all, technical stuff isn’t for everybody.

My Assumptions

In writing this book, I assume that you the reader

Have always loved to read about archaeology or watch it on film.

Like seeing archaeological sites and museums.

Want to join a dig or at least visit one.

Are studying or considering studying archaeology at a college or university.

Love old stuff and the excitement of discovery, puzzles, and figuring things out.

Enjoy imagining the human past.

If any of these statements is true about you, this book should help you explore archaeology’s many and exciting dimensions.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is divided into six parts: Part I defines archaeology and its varieties and thought processes. Part II describes the fieldwork — finding things. In Part III, you find out what to do with everything after you find it and how complicated it is to piece together the puzzle of the human past. In Part IV, I relate what archaeology has revealed about that past — all 2 million years of it! Part V gives you an idea of why archaeology is relevant to your life and how you can go do some yourself. Part VI lists places to visit archaeology.

Part I: Archaeology: Seeing Past People Today

This part introduces you to archaeology, how archaeological sites are formed, and the nature of the evidence. I give you a little of the glorious history and adventure of archaeology and also try to counteract the stereotypes and mistakes common in the public media. I list the many different kinds of archaeology and discuss how archaeologists think about and try to solve the mysteries they investigate, including an example from my own work.

Part II: Archaeological Fieldwork: The Adventure Begins!

In this part, I describe the adventure of fieldwork, how you can prepare, what to bring along, and what you can expect. Then I answer the common question, “How do you know where to dig?” You discover how archaeological survey locates sites, and then the actual excavation and all it entails, from equipment to technique. Finally, I go over the ethical issues involved in archaeological investigation, from dangerous field conditions to respecting local communities and descendants of the people whose stuff you’re digging up.

Part III: After the Dig: You’ve Only Just Begun

The work after the dig is the largest part of archaeology. Part III explains how you process and analyze the materials and data from the dig and then how you piece the past together. I describe laboratory work and artifact analyses and then show you how archaeology tells the story of past human behavior based on those material remains. To show the wide array of viewpoints in archaeological interpretation, I give you some of the major theoretical perspectives used to understand past societies.

Part IV: Archaeology Reconstructs the Whole Human Past

In this part, I run briefly through the great drama of what archaeology has found out about our ancestors and their lives, from the time of the earliest humans through the emergence of ancient civilizations. Only archaeology brings this past alive! Even in historic times, archaeology shows much more than history can ever tell you, especially about people whose history was never written (or was written poorly). Finally, I show you how the method of archaeology — using material culture to interpret human behavior — is useful to study the modern world in ways no other science can.

Part V: Archaeology Is for Everyone

This part is about public archaeology (which is really all archaeology today). Here I show you the many different kinds of interests in archaeology: political, financial, practical, recreational, professional. I give you some case studies of recent hot controversies in archaeology. You explore how archaeological findings affect many aspects of life in ways you may not expect. I also give you tips on how to get involved in archaeology yourself.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

In this part, I list (about) ten neat places to visit archaeology in the U.S. and outside the U.S. I also include ten fun archaeological experiences. You may soon add your own entries to these lists!

Icons Used in the Book

Throughout this book, you’ll see these icons, which I use to highlight important information or direct you to interesting tidbits.

Archaeology is all about discovery! Though I discuss exciting excavations and findings throughout much of the book, this icon tells you about specific fun details of particular finds.

Archaeology is a scientific pursuit, often with some complicated processes, operations, and even equipment. This icon signals examples of areas where you need much more expertise than I can provide in this book. But at least you see the technical terms (and you can use them to impress friends).

I use this icon to remind you about the most crucial concepts in archaeology and to point out corrections or true versions of some mistakes.

Archaeology brings us face-to-face with our human heritage, whether wonderful or disgusting. I use this icon to mark aspects of human nature worth thinking about as you discover archaeology’s potential.

Whenever I provide specific advice that will aid in actual archaeological work or your study of archaeology, I use this Tip icon.

I use this icon to point out important safety-related information, misconceptions, and other dangers that may threaten your archaeological work or experience.

Where to Go from Here

Jump around and read whatever chapter or section catches your interest. Or read the book from front to back. The choice is up to you. Archaeology provides wonderful stories of the past and often high adventure in the present. It’s also very relevant to modern life. This guide tells you what basics you need to know to understand and do it. But you don’t need a pith helmet and safari clothes — old jeans, a bandanna, bug spray, sunscreen, and an open mind should suffice! After seeing how to do archaeology, you yourself can move, as the old Firesign Theater folks said, “forward into the past!”

Part I

Archaeology: Seeing Past People Today

In this part . . .

A rchaeology is exciting and romantic — the thrill of discovery, the recreation of the glories of the human past! But it’s complicated too, and much confusion exists about what it is and how it works. In this part, I define archaeology and explain how it developed and branched into specialties. Chapter 1 shows you how archaeology is unique in its method of investigation. I explain what archaeological evidence consists of and how archaeological sites are formed; you also get some of the background and history of how archaeology was developed by those early adventurers and explorers. Chapter 2 makes it clear that archaeology isn’t dinosaurs or treasure hunting or looting artifacts for sale. All the many kinds of archaeology can be confusing, so Chapter 3 helps you sort them out. To understand how an archaeologist thinks and investigates, read through Chapter 4.

Chapter 1

What Archaeology Is

In This Chapter

Defining archaeology

Distinguishing the different types of archaeological evidence

Understanding the site-formation processes

Checking out the players and developments on the road to modern archaeology

Archaeology is exciting adventure and romantic intrigue as well as amazing scientific investigation. That’s how you see it in movies and the news, and even if the excavation is downtown under the sidewalk or in the middle of some farmer’s field, that adventure is still there because you’re trying to make the unknown known. The dig unearths not only neat artifacts from ancient times but also the often-dramatic stories of how past humans got along in the world — maybe with some lessons for the present day.

Because confusion and misconceptions about the nature of archaeology are everywhere, in this chapter I define archaeology and show you how it really is detective work on a big scale. Here you discover how archaeological sites are formed, how modern archaeology developed, and even how you yourself probably do archaeology all the time without realizing it!

So What Is Archaeology Anyway?

A simple definition: Archaeology is finding out about past human behavior by studying the material evidence left behind.

Archaeology doesn’t necessarily look at the people themselves, but always examines their stuff. Archaeology is very distinctive among all the social sciences (studies of humans and their behavior) for its unique method: studying people not by watching or reading about or talking to them but by analyzing what material things they left behind. Material things means people’s possessions, residues, and anything else visible or tangible — from the tiniest seed bead or corn kernel to the tallest pyramid, from the most nondescript kitchen garbage to the most beautiful gold craftwork. Today it also means people’s hair and DNA as well as dark stains and other features in the soil left from burying, building, and so on.

The method: It’s detective work

Archaeology is exactly like detective work — in fact, it is detective work! Most police or private detectives use all themethods archaeologists use:

Carefully measuring, recording, and photographing the evidence at the (crime) scene.

Using painstakingly accurate techniques to recover, process, and analyze the evidence.

Getting background information on all the people, places, and times involved.

Interviewing knowledgeable people about what happened and what other evidence they may have or know about.

Using techniques from other sciences like physics and chemistry to learn more about the evidence.

Stopping for coffee and doughnuts (or a cold beer) at a little place close by to see what else you can find out.

Compiling all the information to describe what happened.

Stating your case and arguing it, sometimes involving other experts, politicians, journalists, and the public.

Continuing to investigate if you can’t tie up all the loose ends.

Everyone does archaeology sometimes

Archaeological knowledge is about us. You can do the archaeology of the far distant past or the very recent past. Everyone does some archaeology, probably nearly every day. For example, you may know by the car in the driveway who is home, or by the things thrown around the living room what the roommate or kids have been doing in there. Parents, especially, do a lot of archaeology (“Did you brush your teeth before bed?” “Sure, Mom. Always, Mom.” “Then why is the toothbrush still dry?”).

The goal: Understand people

When you do archaeology, you don’t dig just to get some cool artifact (that’s treasure hunting or looting). You don’t really want the finds for yourself, anyway — they go into collections or museum exhibits for all to enjoy and study further, if desired. No, you want to understand past people through what they left on and in the ground (or elsewhere). You examine the once-lost traces of the past for several good reasons. The goals of archaeology are to

Study the human past across space and time.

Reconstruct past human behavior and ways of life.

Understand past cultural systems (social, economic, political, religious) and how they changed through time.

Help conserve the fragile material record of past peoples and interpret this heritage for people today.

Bring the story of the human past to the public for enjoyment, education, and even practical use.

The Nature of Archaeological Evidence

Anything made by humans is an artifact, including a thought, a song, or a smile. In archaeology, artifacts are human-made material objects — you have to be able to see or measure them and retrieve information from them.

Your materials are all the physical items you dig up or otherwise obtain from the archaeological sites, and your data are all the bits of information you retrieve from the dig, the sites, and all the physical remains. So you may wash, sort, and identify your archaeological materials in the laboratory. Then when you list each type of artifact and ecofact (more on these in the following sections) on a table, you create data. The same is true for all the information you record as you excavate a feature or make a map — these are more data, as are all your notes, files, photos, and other information. The following sections describe some categories of these material remains.

Artifacts

Any object made by humans is an artifact. Usually you think of ancient ceramic pots or arrowheads, and indeed these items are everywhere at archaeological sites. But a temple or palace is an artifact too — one made up of individual artifacts such as bricks or stone blocks. A stone used to hammer and chip other stone to make the arrowhead is also an artifact; even though it’s not deliberately shaped, it’s covered with grinding and chipping marks and thus modified by human activity. Finally, the flakes of stone chipped while making stone tools are also artifacts, though they may or may not have been discarded. Most often, artifacts are portable objects excavated and brought back to a laboratory for study.

Ecofacts

Ecofact is a term archaeologists invented to classify natural objects used by humans without modification. Animal bones left from dinner or pollen from gathered plants are ecofacts. But if a bone has been modified to become a harpoon point, that modification makes it an artifact. Even phosphates or other chemicals in the soil are ecofacts showing that people threw their organic waste on the ground.

Features

Anything that’s made by humans but is too big to bring back (intact) to the laboratory is a feature. Features can be garbage pits, hearths, post holes or postmolds (where poles were once in the ground), graves, roads, drip lines from roofs of old buildings, building foundations, storage pits, clusters of artifacts, and even footprints. Technically you can cut out a block of soil around a feature such as a footprint and bring it back to study under better conditions in the lab, but most features have to be excavated (or studied and then preserved) where they’re first uncovered.

Sites

Archaeological sites are places where human habitation or other activity took place and where artifacts, features, and ecofacts are all found. You can have sites of different sizes, shapes, and time periods, from a small stone quarry where bits of chipped rock are lying around to the ruins of a big palace where bits of the quarried stone blocks are left lying around. Depending upon what’s preserved, a site can be small or large, shallow or deep.

Components and boundaries

When people of one time period use a place that people of an earlier time already used, they add another component to a site. A multicomponent site at a prime location such as a shoreline can have cultural deposits going back thousands of years, one component overlying the next. The ideal site has a nice, culturally sterile layer between each component so you can tell them apart. In reality it seldom works out like this. Later people come in and dig into the site and mix the older stuff with their stuff and never even think of how the archaeologist of the future is going to figure it all out!

Not all sites are visible. Sometimes you do archaeological survey to locate sites, including using special techniques if remains are buried or underwater. (See Chapter 6 for more on survey.) Finding the boundaries of sites is also sometimes tricky and may be impossible without digging.

Regions and isolated finds

You can investigate archaeological sites within a whole natural region, such as a river valley or island. Or you may do archaeological survey within an arbitrary project area, such as someone’s property lines; in this case, you do your best to see where the actual past archaeological site extends, but you may never know exactly.

Individual artifact finds of just one or two items are also sometimes called sites if they may indicate a specific activity there. But one arrowhead isn’t enough — it may have fallen from a deer who galloped away after being shot. Criteria for what qualifies as a site can vary according to the archaeologist doing the work and the project guidelines. Many professionals now record specific isolated finds (IFs) or artifact occurrences (AOs) to indicate something was going on in the past, even if they don’t have enough evidence to make it a site.

How Archaeological Sites Form

Archaeological sites can develop over great or small amounts of time and space, and through large or small actions of humans and of nature. What archaeologists call site formation processes can be divided into two categories: cultural and natural processes.

Cultural processes

The cultural activities that contribute to the formation of archaeological sites are simply everything that humans do that results in material evidence. The following list gives you some examples:

Finding raw materials and making artifacts: Making everything from chipped stone tools to pyramids (and the waste these processes leave behind).

Leaving evidence of activity: Using material items and physical spaces, moving objects around, leaving residues, repairing and remaking things — basically, leaving any marks or debris in an area where you performed some activity.

Discarding things (deliberately or by accident): Making garbage dumps, dropping things, or storing items and forgetting about them.

Reusing past things: Taking old pyramids apart to get blocks or bricks for new construction.

Digging into or disturbing ground containing past things: Plowing up old sites and/or bulldozing them to construct new ones.

Natural processes

Mother Nature also contributes to the formation of archaeological sites. Here are some of the ways:

Physical processes such as wind, gravity, rain, storms, drought, volcanoes, and other climate and local weather conditions.

Biological processes such as animals burrowing into the site and bacteria and other organisms causing decay.

Chemical processes such as weathering stone, rusting iron, and decomposing dead plants and animals in acidic soils.

All these processes affect the way the archaeological site is composed and looks. They can be large scale (volcanic ash covering the whole city of Pompeii) or very small scale (an iron artifact rusting beyond recognition). They can be destructive (wooden buildings decaying completely and leaving only dark stains where posts were in the ground), or they can actually preserve the site (the Pompeii ash). Sometimes they both preserve and destroy at the same time: Where I work in the southeastern U.S., I often see the effects of river floods washing away parts of prehistoric riverbank villages, but covering up other parts with several feet of new sand, and thus preserving them better (and making me have to dig deeper to find them).

You have to be sure to distinguish the effects of all these processes as you’re doing archaeology. It helps to know something about the physical sciences and be a good anthropologist who understands human behavior too. In fact, to be an archaeologist you often need to be a jill- or jack-of-all-trades! If you’re not already, a few seasons of fieldwork will help you see what soils indicate human use, what a decayed wooden post looks like in the ground, or how a big orange heavy thing may just be a rusted iron artifact.

How Archaeology Became a Modern Science

Archaeology has had so many colorful figures and astounding discoveries that you really don’t need Hollywood to invent fictitious ones! Here I briefly review the history of archaeology, its finds and adventurers, and how the field developed into the sophisticated modern science it is today. Many famous, flamboyant, and fascinating personalities were pioneers in the development of archaeology (and models for characters like Indiana Jones). I’ve included some of my favorites. Most of them have biographies if you’re interested in reading more — you don’t need made-up Indiana Jones stuff to get armchair adventure!

Early diggers

Historical records say that a sixth-century B.C. Babylonian king and princess were the first to dig up remains of their own society’s glorious past, restore a by-then ancient Sumerian temple-pyramid, and display artifact finds in the palace. Later historians told tales and legends of the ancients, and people have probably always dug things up, especially to sell as souvenirs and treasures of the glorious past of someone somewhere.

But real archaeology is only traceable (so far) back to the Renaissance (14th through 17th centuries), when a passion for learning about the classical past developed. Wealthy folks traveled to ancient lands like Egypt and Mesopotamia and collected antiquities (old items, usually sculptures) dug out of ruins. Also, European antiquarians explored monuments (Roman buildings, Stonehenge, and so on) on their own lands. Antiquarian societies and collectors accumulated loads of items and began to establish museums to display them by the 18th century. Pompeii was accidentally discovered in the late 1500s, and digging was conducted in earnest as early as 1738.

Most of the knowledge of the past that people had until modern times came from historical writings or myth and legend until real science began to emerge in the Western world. The Bible told people what had happened in the past, and folktales supplied the rest. As early as the 1500s, northern Europeans who found Stone Age arrow points were calling them elf-shot or elf-arrows!

Nineteenth-century archaeology

By the early 1800s, naturalists and early scientists had accumulated a good body of artifacts and archaeological knowledge and were using it to interpret humanity’s past in an orderly fashion. With historical models, they charted the progress of human society through time.

Early classification

Two important Danish guys played a major role in early classification efforts. Christian Thomsen organized the finds at the national museum and wanted to exhibit stages of human achievement (and also apparently figure out how to divide the stuff up into display cases). He picked a three-age sequence: stone, bronze, and iron. Jens Worsaae excavated sites and found that stone tools were indeed deepest and therefore oldest; bronze tools were on top of them, and iron artifacts on top of the bronze. Later, the Stone Age was subdivided into Old (Paleolithic) and New Stone Age (Neolithic); the deepest-oldest idea became known as the law of superposition.

These cultural classifications became popular all over Europe, and the terms are still used today — with the following big differences, however:

A single age can fall under different calendar years in different places.

Human “progress” and “stages of development” are misnomers because a single universal path of cultural development doesn’t exist; different cultures change to become more or less complex through time in their own ways.

Archaeologists recognize that these cultural classifications are biased and based purely on technology, as if that’s the only important aspect of human development (ignoring art, literature, architecture, math, religion, and so on). On the other hand, technology is easier to see in the archaeological record!

Explorers, adventurers, and looters

Many fascinating early archaeologists sought adventure and intrigue in searching out the remains and exquisite artifacts of the ancient past. They didn’t really “discover” various sites because local people always led them there. But the good archaeologists published the information and drawings and brought back antiquities for display. The more crass among them grabbed ancient treasures to sell for profit or display on their own estates. You’ve probably heard of some of these colorful people and their exploits:

With Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt came scientists and artists to document the remnants of ancient civilization. One find was the Rosetta Stone, with a second-century B.C. text in Greek and two Egyptian languages. French scholar Champollion used it to decipher ancient Egyptian writing systems.

Giovanni Belzoni was a strong man in the circus before he became famous for his Egyptian tomb-robbing exploits from about 1817 to 1820. He blasted, dragged, and levered away monuments to capture giant statues, mummies, and other relics to display and garner fame.

Travel writer John Lloyd Stephens and artist Frederick Catherwood studied and produced works on the wonderful pyramids and other monuments of the Maya civilization in Mexico and Central America in 1841 and 1843.

Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis surveyed burial mounds, earthworks, and temple platforms of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys (1848) and published their detailed descriptions for all to see.

U.S. president Thomas Jefferson excavated a prehistoric Native American burial mound on his estate at Monticello, Virginia, with the intellectual goal of finding out scientific details (1788).

Wealthy businessman Heinrich Schliemann thought Homer’s classical story of the Trojan War was really true and went to find and excavate Troy in northwestern Turkey (1871). Then he dug another site from Homer’s legends: Mycenae in southern Greece, which was possibly the citadel of King Agamemnon.

Late 19th and early 20th-century improvements

The goals of archaeological pursuits became more sophisticated and scientific by the late 19th century as investigators realized they needed systematic study to make sense of the wealth of finds. Here are some notable figures of this time in archaeology’s history when more careful digging developed:

General Pitt Rivers excavated on his country estate in southern England in the 1880s, opening Bronze-Age burial mounds, an Iron-Age fort, and a Roman military camp. He meticulously measured, drew, and even photographed his work and finds, laying the foundations for the modern archaeological method.

Sir Flinders Petrie accurately surveyed Egyptian pyramids and excavated tombs, mummies, and cemeteries with precision. He devised a method to discern cultural chronologies by examining changes in artifact styles through time.

Sir Arthur Evans excavated (and partially restored) the palace ruins at Knossos, on the Greek island of Crete, beginning in 1900. His discoveries brought to light the Minoan civilization (3000 to 1200 B.C.) that predated the Mycenaean state made famous by Heinrich Schliemann (discussed in the preceding section).

Cyrus Thomas, head of the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Mound Exploration, collected information on thousands of mounds then being looted like crazy, especially in the U.S. Mississippi Valley. He had thought the mounds were built by a vanished people, but his findings changed his mind, and he reported in 1894 that the mounds were indeed made by ancestors of diverse Native American groups.

The early 20th century: Fabulous finds and academic advances

Sensational finds and colorful figures continued to make amazing discoveries in the early 20th century. Archaeologists did more orderly excavation, and synthesis of the results became more commonplace during that period.

Famous early figures

As you’ve probably realized, archaeology was a leisure-time pursuit for the wealthy, those with time to travel, and many British colonial-type holdovers investigating the pasts of various intriguing destinations during the early 1900s. Here are a few of these characters:

Howard Carter, who had worked with Flinders Petrie in Egypt (see the preceding section), was funded by the Earl of Carnarvon to explore the Valley of the Kings. He discovered the spectacular tomb of King Tut, a relatively unimportant pharaoh whose burial place is notable because it wasn’t looted like all the others, so it was full of glorious wealth.

Sir Leonard Woolley dug in Syria in 1912, assisted by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), with whom he also engaged in spy activities for the British government. After World War I, he excavated the famous Mesopotamian city of Ur in Iraq (see Chapter 14) and took 50 years to write a ten-volume report on all the everyday mud-brick houses and the royal graves full of gold, silver, and other riches.

Gertrude Bell, an Arabic-speaking British travel writer and fascinating political figure in the Middle East, investigated Mesopotamian ruins and was also involved in British intelligence. She organized the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Museum and was instrumental in the emergence of the modern country of Iraq.

Gertrude Caton-Thompson worked in Egypt and then excavated at Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa in 1929. She said those ruins originated with indigenous African people, a view that the colonial government later outlawed until investigators eventually proved it to be true.

Sir Mortimer Wheeler was a major British archaeologist by the 1920s. He followed and improved the exacting techniques pioneered by Pitt Rivers and dug sites of many kinds, from Roman towns to the famous Iron-Age hill fort Maiden Castle in southern England. Then he went to India and brought to light the ancient cities of the lost Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan. (See Chapter 14 for a discussion of these civilizations.) He was a dashing public figure and early television personality as well; many think he was one of the real-life models for Indiana Jones.

Archaeology gets more academic

Scholars realized that their major goal should now be to organize some of the vast amounts of information that digs were providing. V. Gordon Childe, an Australian who delved into archaeology across Europe, produced the first major syntheses of prehistory. He talked about the processes of change in the deep human past that led to the Agricultural Revolution and the Urban Revolution — in other words, food production and later the emergence of early states. His many works include The Danube in Prehistory (1929), New Light on the Most Ancient East (1934), and one of my very favorite archaeological titles, Man Makes Himself (1939).

In the early 20th century lots of fossil finds that show that early humans first appeared in Africa came to light. Most of this study wasn’t archaeological but the subject of human paleontology or paleoanthropology. But the famous Louis Leakey did go to Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania to look for the earliest human evidence because he had seen crude-looking chipped stones there that he thought were early tools (and they were — see Chapter 12 for more).

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt began programs to bring jobs to the country, including a great deal of archaeological work, especially in the poor region of the South. Hundreds of mounds and other sites were dug and thousands of bags of artifacts retrieved and piles of data accumulated. By then, academic institutions were beginning to train archaeologists who could supervise workers and then synthesize the findings for major regions. They used conveniently-named archaeological cultures (usually based on a pottery type or other characteristic artifact) and time periods (ditto) to organize the information and tell the story of the past, one time period after the next. This descriptive approach is called culture history (even when it concerns prehistory or the time before writing). Archaeologists still use this approach today, of course, but with much more than just simple description. I discuss it more in Chapter 11.

Early developments in explaining the past

Many 19th-century antiquarians studying relics of the past saw finds of stone tools with bones of extinct forms of animals, demonstrating the great antiquity of humans. They noticed that Native Americans were still making stone arrow points, easily comparable to chipped stone tools elsewhere in the world to see the work of the human hand. Geologist Sir Charles Lyell demonstrated the great age of the Earth and how its past processes were the same as the ones acting today (the principle of uniformitarianism). Charles Darwin used that knowledge to develop a systematic scientific theory of evolution, accounting for the development of all life forms (in his On the Origins of Species in 1859), later extending it to human development too.

New archaeology of the mid-20th century

After World War II, several intellectual currents came together to influence a mini-revolution in archaeology. The technologies developed in wartime combined with the growing desire to be more scientific. Some archaeologists were dissatisfied with simply describing what was found and where (producing culture history). They wanted to understand how past cultures functioned and answer questions about how human systems were organized. The movement they originated was called the New Archaeology. Here are some of its influences:

New technologies like aerial photography and computers.

Other scientific breakthroughs like radiocarbon dating.

Growing concerns about civil rights, human rights, and the natural environment.

Growing concerns about historic preservation and loss of archaeological sites to growth and development or new farming practices.

Late 20th-century archaeology

After New Archaeology had been around for a couple of decades, archaeologists decided they couldn’t call it new anymore and started using the term processualarchaeology because the method explores cultural processes. Most archaeology done today is processual archaeology, as I discuss at greater length in Chapter 11.

Of course, every action has a reaction, and the response to scientific archaeology in the 1980s was that it was too ethnocentric or biased in favor of the dominant culture (which it is) and ignored the human story and meaning of the past. This response was a more humanistic archaeological approach (clumsily) called postprocessualarchaeology; I describe it more in Chapter 11. Postprocessual archaeology contributes a lot to modern practice and is valuable for making you understand how you know what you know about the archaeological record.

Modern 21st-century archaeology

Today you combine the description of culture history with the scientific approach and an awareness of biases you may have in your research. You must be acutely aware of the issues of heritage (whose ancestors are you digging up?), political uses of archaeology (to forward someone’s land claims, for example), and conservation of the resource (or historic preservation — saving sites and monuments from destruction).

Many laws enacted in the late 20th century now protect archaeological remains all over the world’s lands and seas. They also generate more archaeological investigation in the path of construction and development. Many new techniques and precise methods may mean you spend more time filling out forms and other paperwork (or computer work) than digging. But it’s all worth it because you also have the glory of the discovery!

In the rest of Part I, you see how contemporary archaeology has become enormously professional, what it really studies, and all the many specialties that have blossomed. I also show you how archaeologists use scientific method to come to logical conclusions about the materials and data they discover.

Archaeology in the field

Fieldwork has always been the special tradition of archaeology, no matter what type you’re doing. You go out there and find the lost traces of past peoples (archaeological survey) and dig them up (excavation), and, yes, possibly encounter adventure along the way. But you’re also aware of far more ethical and safety considerations these days than were some of the historic figures I described earlier in this section, who barged into another country and hired local natives to dig huge trenches that sometimes collapsed on them!

Because you have so much more to think about and plan in doing modern archaeology, in Part II I describe all the steps in accomplishing fieldwork, from the research design and list of supplies and equipment to bring to the strategies for deciding where to dig and careful procedures for excavating in very small increments. I show you how to record everything you do and find so that you offset the destruction you cause by digging with the value of your new information about human behavior in the past.

Archaeology in the lab

The largest part of archaeological work is what you do after you excavate: process, analyze, and care for your finds and for all the information you’ve gleaned about the past. To get a handle on what is for some an overwhelming amount of labor and responsibility, Part III gives you a rundown of all the steps in laboratory work, from the time you bring in your bags of dirty artifacts to the preparation of your final report. I describe what a good archaeology lab should be and list many of the fancy ways you can analyze artifacts and draw out of them fascinating bits of information about their makers and users. You also see how to put all the bits together and use different theoretical orientations to tell the story of the past in different ways.

Archaeology’s human story