Foundations of Archaeology
Week one and two of the Spring Semester of Archaeology is in the bag, and we have learned what archaeologists are and how they got their start. First we learned what archaeologist are not: they are not dinosaur diggers, Indiana Jones, and definitely not Angelina Jolie squeezed into a very un-proportional Lara Croft outfit. They study all human cultures through the recovery and analysis of material remains and environmental data from all places and times , basically they have more of a chance of digging though a midden than through the tomb of an ancient Babylonian king. Archaeology is very destructive, as in the site can never be reconstructed again, but it also extremely tedious as small layers of the stratigraphy are removed to create a timeline of the sight. Everything is documented in detail and any artifacts or ecofacts are cataloged. The profession has progressed from the Antiquarians that only cared about the artifacts and objects to modern archa...