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Archaeology is partly the
discovery of the treasures of the past, partly the careful work of the
scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is
toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with
living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it is investigating the sewers of
Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation, so
that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And
it is the conservation of the world's cultural heritage against looting and
careless harm.
Archaeology, then, is both a
physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the
study or laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. The rich mixture
of danger and detective work has also made it the perfect vehicle for
fiction writers and film-makers, from Agatha Christie with Murder in
Mesopotamia to Stephen Spielberg with Indiana Jones. However far from
reality such portrayals are, they capture the essential truth that
archaeology is an exciting quest - the quest for knowledge about ourselves
and our past.
But how does archaeology
relate to disciplines such as anthropology and history, that are also
concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science? And what
are the responsibilities of the archaeologist in today's world?
Anthropology, at its broadest,
is the study of humanity - our physical characteristics as animals and our
unique non-biological characteristics that we call culture. Culture in this
sense includes what the anthropologist, Edward Tylor, summarised in 1871 as
'knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society'. Anthropologists also use the term
'culture’ in a more restricted sense when they refer to the ‘culture1 of a
particular society, meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to
that society, which distinguish it from other societies. Anthropology is
thus a broad discipline - so broad that it is generally broken down into
three smaller disciplines: physical anthropology, cultural anthropology and
archaeology.
Physical anthropology, or
biological anthropology as it is also called, concerns the study of human
biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved. Cultural
anthropology - or social anthropology - analyses human culture and society.
Two of its branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of individual
living cultures) and ethnology (which sets out to .compare cultures using
ethnographic evidence to derive general principles about human society).
Archaeology is the ‘past tense
of cultural anthropology’. Whereas cultural anthropologists will often base
their conclusions on the experience of living within contemporaly
communities, archaeologists study past societies primarily through their
material remains - the buildings, tools, and other artefacts that
constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former
societies.
Nevertheless, one of the most
important tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret
material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Why are some
dwellings round and others square? Here the methods of archaeology and
ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed
‘ethnoarchaeology’, where, like ethnographers, they live among contemporary
communities, but with the specific purpose of learning how such societies
use material culture - how they make their tools and weapons, why they
build their settlements where they do, and so on. Moreover, archaeology has
an active role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studies
constitutes a developing field, where it is realised that the world's
cultural heritage is a diminishing resource which holds different meanings
for different people.
If, then, archaeology deals
with the past, in what way does it differ from history? In the broadest
sense, just as archaeology is an aspect of anthropology, so too is it a
part of history - where we mean the whole history of humankind from its
beginnings over three million years ago. Indeed, for more than ninety-nine
per cent of that huge span of time, archaeology - the study of past
material culture - is the only significant source of information.
Conventional historical sources begin only with the introduction of written
records around 3,000 BC in western Asia, and much later in most other parts
of the world.
A commonly drawn distinction
is between pre-history, i.e. the period before written records - and
history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written
evidence. To archaeology, which studies all cultures and periods, whether
with or without writing, the distinction between history and pre-history is
a convenient dividing line that recognises the importance of the written
word, but in no way lessens the importance of the useful information
contained in oral histories.
Since the aim of archaeology
is the understanding of humankind, it is a humanistic study, and since it
deals with the human past, it is a historical discipline. But it differs
from the study of written history in a fundamental way. The material the
archaeologist finds does not tell us directly what to think. Historical
records make statements, offer opinions and pass judgements. The objects
the archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing directly in
themselves. In this respect, the practice of the archaeologist is rather
like that of the scientist, who collects data, conducts experiments,
formulates a hypothesis, tests the hypothesis against more data, and then,
in conclusion, devises a model that seems best to summarise the pattern
observed in the data. The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the
past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural
world.
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