ARCHAEOLOGY

also spelled archeology the scientific study of the 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: everything made by human beingsfrom simple tools to complex machines, from the earliest houses and temples and tombs to palaces, cathedrals, and pyramids. Archaeological investigations are a principal source of knowledge of prehistoric, ancient, and extinct culture. The word comes from the Greek archaia (ancient things) and logos (theory or science). The archaeologist is first a descriptive worker: he has to describe, classify, and analyze the artifacts he studies. An adequate and objective taxonomy is the basis of all archaeology, and many good archaeologists spend their lives in this activity of description and classification. But the main aim of the archaeologist is to place the material remains in historical contexts, to supplement what may be known from written sources, and, thus, to increase understanding of the past. Ultimately, then, the archaeologist is a historian: his aim is the interpretive description of the past of man. Increasingly, many scientific techniques are used by the archaeologist, and he uses the scientific expertise of many persons who are not archaeologists in his work. The artifacts he studies must often be studied in their environmental contexts; and botanists, zoologists, soil scientists, and geologists may be brought in to identify and describe plants, animals, soils, and rocks. Radioactive carbon dating, which has revolutionized much of archaeological chronology, is a by-product of research in atomic physics. But although archaeology uses extensively the methods, techniques, and results of the physical and biological sciences, it is not a natural science; some consider it a discipline that is half science and half humanity. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that the archaeologist is first a craftsman, practicing many specialized crafts (of which excavation is the most familiar to the general public), and then a historian. The justification for this work is the justification of all historical scholarship: to enrich the present by knowledge of the experiences and achievements of our predecessors. Because it concerns things people have made, the most direct findings of archaeology bear on the history of art and technology; but by inference it also yields information about the society, religion, and economy of the people who created the artifacts. Also, it may bring to light and interpret previously unknown written documents, providing even more certain evidence about the past. But no one archaeologist can cover the whole range of man's history, and there are many branches of archaeology divided by geographical areas (such as classical archaeology, the archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome; or Egyptology, the archaeology of ancient Egypt) or by periods (such as medieval archaeology and industrial archaeology). Writing began 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt; its beginnings were somewhat later in India and China, and later still in Europe. The aspect of archaeology that deals with the past of man before he learned to write has, since the middle of the 19th century, been referred to as prehistoric archaeology, or prehistory. In prehistory the archaeologist is paramount, for here the only sources are material and environmental. The scope of this article is to describe briefly how archaeology came into existence as a learned discipline; how the archaeologist works in the field, museum, laboratory, and study; and how he assesses and interprets his evidence and transmutes it into history. also spelled Archeology, the scientific study of the material remains of past human life and activities. These include human artifacts from the very earliest bones and stone tools to the man-made objects that are buried or thrown away in the present day. Archaeological investigations are a principal source of knowledge of prehistoric, ancient, and extinct cultures. The materials that are archaeology's subject of research and study include everything made or used by human beings: tools, utensils, weapons, ornaments, buildings, settlements, monuments, and inscriptions. (A general term for any one of the things made by a human being is artifact.) The archaeologist's first task is to describe, classify, and analyze such artifacts, but his main task is to place these material remains in historical contexts, to supplement what may be known from written sources, and thus to increase the general understanding of the human past. Strictly speaking, archaeology is not concerned with the analysis and interpretation of the bones of ancient humans themselveswhether fossilized or not. The study of these is the concern of the physical anthropologist or human paleontologist. Neither is the archaeologist normally prepared to decipher or interpret the writings of ancient peoplesthis is the specialty of the epigraphist and philologist. The principal activities of the archaeologist include preliminary fieldworki.e., the discovery and recording of sitesand the excavation, classification, dating, and interpretation of materials. Most important excavations are conducted only after careful planning, though many important sites have been discovered and excavated in the course of preparations for construction projects. All forms of excavation require great skill, extreme care in the actual uncovering of buried artifacts, and the meticulous recording of what is found by means of words and pictures. The analysis of artifacts entails the precise description and classification of those objects by form and use, determination of the materials from which they were made, placing of the objects in environmental and cultural contexts, relative or absolute dating, and historical interpretation. For many years, dating was based on historical records (in the case of Classical archaeology), stratigraphy (the study of the relative chronology of the Earth's strata), and dendrochronology (analysis of tree rings). In 1948, however, the development of radioactive-carbon dating permitted absolute dating of materials up to 40,000 years old; subsequent techniques have extended this timescale considerably further. Additional reading Good general introductions to the aims and methods of archaeology are Leonard Woolley, Digging Up the Past (1930); Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Archaeology from the Earth (1954); and Grahame Clark, Archaeology and Society, 3rd rev. ed. (1957). For the history of archaeology and its relation to the development of anthropology, see C.W. Ceram, Gtter, Grber und Gelehrte (1949; Eng. trans., Gods, Graves and Scholars, 1951); G. Bibby, The Testimony of the Spade (1956); and Glyn Daniel, A Hundred and Fifty Years of Archaeology (1974). Anthologies of archaeological writings that relate both to the history of the subject and its present methods are many. The following are recommended: R.F. Heizer, The Archaeologist at Work (1959), and Man's Discovery of his Past, 2nd ed. (1970); and Jacquetta Hawkes, The World of the Past (1963). For the development of American archaeology, see G. Willey and G. Sabloff, The History of American Archaeology (1973). Special aspects of the development of archaeology are dealt with in D. Brothwell and E. Higgs, Science in Archaeology, 2nd ed. (1969); George F. Bass, Archaeology Under Water (1967); W.F. Libby, Radiocarbon Dating, 2nd ed. (1955); Kenneth Hudson, A Social History of Archaeology (1981); Myra Shackley, Environmental Archaeology (1981); and M.G.L. Baillie, Tree-Ring Dating in Archaeology (1982).