Began: European Renaissance; wealthly collectors (antiquarians) began to travel around the world, collecting fine arts which then became a preoccupation for the
?. King Charles III ordered the Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre to excavate Herculaneum, an ancient Roman City that was buried under volcanic ash. There, he found jewelry, fragments of bronze horses

The greeks and Romans both considered the ancient egyptians the fountain of wisdom and medical knowledge. Nothing was truly known about ancient egypt until Napoleon bonaparte invaded in 1798.French linguist jean Champollion was able to decipher anceint hieroglyphs in 1833 this was a breakthrough that unlocked secrets of the civilization.John Wilkinson wrote detailed accounts of their everyday lives and found that it was a very colorful civilization but also a conservative one.      

The Assyrians and Sumerians

Austen Henry Layard found two Assyrian buildings the first day he arrived and his greatest discovery was unearthing a complete royal library. He found piles of clay tablets over a foot deep on the floor. George Smith discovered a tablet that told the prophet Hasisadra, who survived a great flood sent by the gods to punish humankind. Ernest de Sarzec found the Sumerian civilization, the earliest literate society in the world.

Heninrich  set out to prove that greek poet Homer`s iliad and odyssey was real but it was Frank Calvert who had made the discovery of the city of troy. During construction of exploring troy heninrich found 7 ancient cities built one on top of the other. Heninrich moved his explorations over to Mycenae in hope of finding king Agamemnons burial site however the burial site he found archaeologist later found that the site was 300 to400 years before the trojan war. This prompted a new beginning to archaeology where scientific record was put before spectacular discovery

Asia: Scrolls and Shoulder Blades

Charles Darwin proclaimed that Africa was the “cradle of humankind”. During the 19th century, African explorers found traces of ancient life in rock paintings which were linked to ancestors of modern San hunter-gathers of Eastern and Southern Africa. Karl Mauch has said that he has found the biblical queen of sheba in zimbabwe. However, Gertrude Caton-Thompson proved that Zimbabwe was 8 centuries old and entirely the work of Africans.

Maya Civilization

Only a few catholic priests recorded details of maya civilization before it vanished. John Stephans and Frederick Catherwood recorded information on maya society and and how it compares to the egyptians. Talks about how the maya prymids equal to the finest monuments of egypt.

Diffusionism: How Did Civilization Spread?

As we gather more and more information about archaeological excavations from the world, it became evident that unilinear evolution was too simplistic. Diffusionism is an assumption that many human inventions originated in one place then scattered to other parts of the world. Diffusionist theories were very popular in the 12th century. Elliot Smith argued that the “Children of the Sun” had voyaged all over the world, taking their worship and their civilization.

Ecological/Evolutionary Approaches

Archaeologist use this approach to focus on interactions between ancient societies and their environments and treat the former as a holistic ecosystems. Through this, culture change results from communal responses to stresses in the relationship between human societies and their ecosystems. It also assumes that cultural and social change results from interplay of different environmental and social factors. Gordon Hillman documented how hunter-gatherers of Euphrates Valley flourished in 11,000 B.C. by relying on fall nut harvests. The people experienced a drought, leading them to turn from nuts to wild grasses.

Historical Materialist Approaches

Most archaeological sites now have a museum accompanied by the site. Tourist peer into display cases and admire fine art, jewelry, remains, and more. However, many people can be greedier and would want to own a piece of the real thing. Collectors and treasure hunters are the curse of archaeology. Major museums compete to acquire the finest specimens of art. For example, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York paid millions of dollars for a painted Greek vase which was looted from an Italian tomb. When people collect archaeological finds, they are collecting a part of an endangered, finite resource that is vanishing rapidly that can never be replaced. Archaeological sites document the past and are not a renewable source.

Discovery : The Jamestown Settlement

In 1670 the first lasting english settlement in the Americas in Jamestown. The colony mostly survived on the cash crop known as tobacco. The town was abandoned in 1699. In 1994 the lost settlement was found by archaeologist william kelso. A many archaeologist Thought the settlement had been underwater for the past 4 centuries.The discovery of Jamestown settlement is known as one of the most remarkable discoveries in recent years.

Why does archaeology matter?

Archaeology exercises a curious fascination. Scientific treasure troves appeal to the explore and adventure in all of us and bring the past to life in dramatic ways .

Rulers and governments have used the past to justify the present since civilization began. The past has always served the present, for every society manufactures history.Archaeology is peculiarly vulnerable to political misuse because it deals with ancient societies and events that are little known, even from a archaeological sources. Archaeology with its extended time perspectives has added entire new chapters to human history.  

Around 200,000 years ago, earlier anatomically modern humans evolved in the woodlands of eastern and southern Africa. These evolved people were still hunters and gathers but were more efficient in their adaptations. Human beings had crossed into Australia by 45,000 years ago and about 10,000 years ago, they started developing intricate technology.

Due to the melting of the ice caps during the end of the ice age, human populations had to adjust their way of life because of the changing environment. In southwest aisa hunter-gatherer started to cultivate wheat and barley. We now realize that farmingand the domestication of animals were complex changes in human culture that took place all over the world.  

EUROPEAN EXPANSION

The expansion of western civilization outward from its european homeland during the age of discovery. 5 centuries past and the westerners were coming into contact with many different human societies.These were the centuries when the world`s diverse societies were first drawn into a nascent world system.

Izumi Shimada began a long-term research at the capital in 1978. It volved a study of the tomb, the contents and construction, and the excavation of different burials in Sican Society. Shimada has excavated two sepulchers and took 6 months to excavate the East Tomb. The principal burial was that of a man 40-50 years old and was painted with red cinnabar paint and then dressed in a full ceremonial regalia. His head was separated from his body and a pair of golden gloves and a shin cover lay by the body.

This lord owned bronze tools, 165 pounds of perforated, semiprecious beads, and 1,000 pounds of hammered alloy sheet scraps. All of these products would of took a thousand hours to produce

Context

Artifacts are found in archaeological sites. They can hold the remains of dwellings  burials storage pits and crafts activities and sometimes several occupation levels. An artifact is of limited value without its context. An artifact removed from its context in space and time in an archaeological site is merely an object that yields limited information cultural information.Archaeologist distinguish primary context the original position of an artifact in time and space.

Discovery: Deciphering Hopewell

Hopewell is famous for its earthworks .Archaeologist were having trouble trying to decipher the burial rituals and cosmology of hopewell groups.  The spiritual beliefs and culture are still relatively unknown.

Genetics and DNA

Historical Materialist Approaches

Historical materialist approaches have made three positive and important contributions. First is that meaning is more important than materialism. Second, archaeologists must critically examine their social responsibilities, looking past specialties to broader aims of discipline. Third, is many perspectives on ancient society have been neglected and a lot of this includes women, minorities, and “people without history”.

Cognitive-Processual Archaeology

Obsidian Hydration

Luminescence Dating

Discovery Eruption at Akrotiri, Greece, 1967

Greek archaeologist Marinatos discovered the Greek Pompeii a city that was completely buried in volcanic ash while he was looking for the Minoan civilization. The city of pompeii was very well preserved and the ash for over 3,500 years.

Captain James Cook first visited Tahiti in 1769 and wondered how the Tahitians arrived at the remote island. Captain Cook met the Tahitian navigator Tupaia and questioned him and Tupaia told Captain Cook they used the sun as a compass by day and the moon at night. Modern scholars believe that Tupaia could define an area bounded by Marqueas in the northeast, Tuamotus, and Cook Islands. A sailor David Lewis encountered aged canoe navigators in the Carolina Islands of Micronesia. He learned how navigators used zenith passages of key stars to navigate, swell direction, waves off distant islands, and land birds. They were also capable of returning to their homes using the same signs of the sea and sky.

Middle-Range Theory and the Archaeological Record

Middle range theory comprises methods, theories and ideas that can be applied to any period and anywhere in the world to explain what we have discovered ,excavated, or analyzed from the past. It is important to archaeology, weather one believes that this research is meant to specify the relationships between behavior and material remaines or to understand the determinants of patterning and structural properties of the archaeological record.

The Living Past

A century ago, people were still living the same ways as their prehistoric ancestors were living however the face of Western exploration and industry civilization has changed these remote people. Today, a few of these societies still live in their traditional ways but many are extinct. The Tasmanians have vanished over 70 years ago due to white settlement and Indians of Terra del Fuego disappeared in the 1950’s. Anthropologists have talked about an “ethnographic present”, a moment in time when non-Western society first came in. There have never been an ethnographic present, but archaeologist have long recognized the value of records of such societies as a way of interpreting older cultures.

Ethnographic Analogy

This method is the basis on which archaeologist use the ethnographic record to interpret prehistoric artifacts and sites. This type of reasoning was obviously simplistic because each human society ancient or modern, has,or has had its own distinctive adaption to its environment,which helps shape all aspects of its culture in many ways.

Richard Lee, an anthropologist, who spent many years studying the !Kung San of southern Africa took John Yellen with him on one of his expeditions. Yellen drew plans of abandoned sites of known age, recorded house positions, hearths, and occupation debris. He found that San camps developed their layouts through conscious acts like building shelter or a hearth as well as through such casual deeds like discarding animal bones and debris from toolmaking. Yellen also recorded that most food preparation took place in family areas and most activities in San camps were related to individual families.

Maya Metates

Archaeologists love experimenting with the past. Louis Keakey, famous Stone Age archaeologist, spent many years perfecting his skills as a stone toolmaker. One of the most remarkable experiments of all was Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. He wanted to prove that Polynesia had been settled by adventurous Peruvians who sailed balsa rafts. He did succeed in researching Polynesia in a balsa raft but didn’t prove that Peruvians settled in Polynesia. Experiments in living prehistoric life have been getting popular in Britain and Denmark. One British experiment centered on several families who were provided with crops and livestock and were isolated. These experiements provide superficial insights into the realities of prehistoric life.

king tuts tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and lord Carnarvon. This had been the one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history. It took 8 years for carter  to clear king tuts tomb who then died by cause of mosquito bite infection.