Archaeology

Pronunciation: [�rkEol�ujE]

[Gr.,=study of beginnings], a branch of anthropology, which 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.

It is concerned with the systemic (logical) study of physical remains of human communities -- the surviving ruins and artefacts that people in the past left behind.It defers from history in that it does not rely on written evidence.

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 techniques, both relative (e.g., stratigraphy, carbon-14, patassium-argon ) and absolute, 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, and Iron Age) was essentially based on prehistoric materials from Scandinavia and France.

Later interpretations of prehistoric human life emphasize cultural responses to changing demographic and environmental conditions. Thus the Paleolithic , Mesolithic , and Neolithic periods are evaluated in terms of subsistence technologies, and explanations are sought for the causes underlying these transitions. Contemporary archaeologists are also concerned with the emergence of various forms of institutional organization, including chiefdoms, class stratification, and states. Among the most important work done in the mid-20th cent. was that of Louis Leakey, who located the skeletal remains of humans in East Africa dating back 1.7 million years. In recent years, a number of archaeologists have turned from traditional concerns and have made efforts to reconstruct ideological elements of extinct cultures.