Introduction to Archaeology

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Introduction to Archaeology

• Prehistory and Ch 1

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Why is it important to know prehistory prior to
beginning a study in archaeology?

• Archaeologists want to learn about people across
  all space and all time through the location and
  interpretation of material remains.

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Human Origins

• 2.5 million years ago the first tool making human
  appeared in Africa
• 1.5 millions years prior to that earlier hominids
  occupied the region as earlier as
• Around 1.9 million years ago, humanity moved out
  of Africa into Asia and Europe changing and
  adapting to their environments along the way.
• Around 750,000 years ago, the human population
  was no more then a few tens of thousands of
  people.
• By about 100,000 years ago, those modern humans
  were fully developed
• By about 40,000 to 15,000 years ago, humans
  occupied every corner of the globe.

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So what is Archaeology?

• Archaeology the study of material remains and
  human cultures using archaeological theory and
  techniques.
• Essentially, archaeology is the study of the
  human past.

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Goals of Archaeology

• Conserving and managing the worlds archaeological
  sites for the future
• Studying sites and their contents in a context of
  time and space to reconstruct human culture.
• Reconstructing past lifeways or the ways in which
  people made their living in the changing
  environments of the past which has developed into
  a major goal of archaeology.
• Explaining why cultures change (or stay the
  same).
• Understanding sites, artifacts, remains and other
  aspects of the archaeological record.

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History of Archaeology

• The first archaeologists were adventurers.
• Some early archaeologist dug for profit other to
  satisfy their intellectual curiosity, yet
  archaeology has come a long way since then.
• It has moved from an amateurs pastime to a
  scientifically based occupation.

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Archaeology in the Contemporary World

• Archaeology has important lessons about human
  diversity to impart in todays world.
• Relationships between individuals and groups have
  been established and important in society since
  the beginning of man.
• Archaeology has a way of reconstructing the past
  thereby contributing to modern day development.

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Crisis in Archaeology

• Archaeological sites are now endangered
  species.
• Archaeology sites are finite resources.
• Today, historical sites are being destroyed so
  rapidly that a large portion of the human past
  has already vanished.

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Slack Family Example

• Long before the Slack family worked their
  farmthe area was a Native American town on this
  land.
• This land was occupied for two centuries
  beginning about 1450ad.
• The Slack Farm site was the largest known
  Mississippian site that had escaped destruction
  by looters.

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• This all changed in 1987 when the farm was sold
  from the family.
• The new owners leased the land and the rights to
  mine artifacts to a small group of looters.
• Within two months the looters had this well
  preserved site into essentially nothing more than
  a waste land.
• Once archaeologists learned of the destruction,
  they moved in quickly to salvage what they could,
  which was not much.

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Who Owns the Past?

• In addition to looters and treasure hunters
• ETHICS!!
• Us as humans think of and use the past in
  different ways.
• it does not does not give archaeologist a unique
  authority over the past.
• So that begs the question, who does own the past?