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Archaeology is the study of human activity in the past, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts (also known as eco-facts) and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record).
Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies around the world. [1]
Historical archaeology is a form of archaeology dealing with places, things, and issues from the past or present when written records and oral traditions can inform and contextualize cultural material. These records can both complement and conflict with the archaeological evidence found at a particular site.
Culture-historical thought would be introduced to British archaeology by the Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe in the late 1920s. In the United Kingdom and United States, culture-history came to be supplanted as the dominant theoretical paradigm in archaeology during the 1960s, with the rise of processual archaeology.
The Oxford English Dictionary first cites "archaeologist" from 1824; this soon took over as the usual term for one major branch of antiquarian activity. "Archaeology", from 1607 onwards, initially meant what is now seen as "ancient history" generally, with the narrower modern sense first seen in 1837.
Historical method is the collection of techniques and guidelines that historians use to research and write histories of the past. Secondary sources, primary sources and material evidence such as that derived from archaeology may all be drawn on, and the historian's skill lies in identifying these sources, evaluating their relative authority, and combining their testimony appropriately in order ...
Adrian Andrei Rusu (born 1951) Romanian; Medieval archaeology, researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Art History in Cluj-Napoca; Simon Rutar (1851–1903) Slovenian; Slovenia; Alberto Ruz Lhuillier (1906–1979) Mexican; Pre-Columbian Meso-America; Donald P. Ryan (born 1957) American; Egypt (Valley of the Kings)
This view of culture would be "entirely satisfactory if the aim of archaeology was solely the definition and description of these entities." [12] However, as the 1960s rolled around and archaeology sought to be more scientific, archaeologists wanted to do more than just describe artifacts, and the archaeological culture found. [2]