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The post-processualists' approach to archaeology is diametrically opposed to that of the processualists. The processualists, as positivists, believed that the scientific method should and could apply to archaeological investigation, therefore allowing archaeologists to present objective statements about past societies based upon the evidence.
Post-excavation analysis constitutes processes that are used to study archaeological materials after an excavation is completed. Since the advent of "New Archaeology" in the 1960s, the use of scientific techniques in archaeology has grown in importance. [ 2 ]
This definition, which emphasizes the materiality of the archaeological record and aligns archaeology with material culture studies and the 'material turn' in cultural anthropology, has become increasingly common with the rise of post-processual archaeology. [14]
Processual archaeology originated in American archaeology, where analysing historical change over time had proved difficult with existing technology. Processual archaeology (formerly, the New Archaeology) is a form of archaeological theory.
Hodder, Ian. (1991). Postprocessual Archaeology and the Current Debate. In Processual and Post-Processual Archaeologies: Multiple Ways of Knowing the Past, Edited by R. Preucel, pp. 30–41. CAI Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Occasional Paper No. 10. Hodder, Ian (1999). The Archaeological Process: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Digging a site "in phase" is considered good practice and can be thought of as the process of removing the deposits on site in the reverse order that they arrived. Phasing is achieved on site by many methods including intuition and experience, but the main analytical tool post excavation is the Harris matrix. Phase is sometimes termed ...
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture. It originated in the late nineteenth century as cultural evolutionism began to fall out of favor with many antiquarians and archaeologists.
The process of archaeology is essentially destructive, as excavation permanently changes the nature and context of the site and the associated information. Therefore, archaeologists and conservators have an ethical responsibility to care for and conserve the sites they put at risk.