Archaeology
From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project
Archaeology, archeology, or archæology (from the Greek words αρχαίος = ancient and λόγος = word/speech/discourse) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes.
The goals of archaeology are to document and explain the origins and development of human culture, understand culture history, chronicle cultural evolution, and study human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies. It is considered in North America to be one of the four sub-fields of anthropology.
Origins and Definition
Archaeology is an approach to understanding human culture through its material remains regardless of chronology. Archaeology is the study of human culture through material remains from humans in the past. In the Old World, archaeology has tended to focus on the study of physical remains, the methods used in recovering them and the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings in achieving the subject's goals. The discipline's roots in antiquarianism and the study of Latin and Ancient Greek provided it with a natural affinity with the field of history. In the the United States and, increasingly, in other parts of the world, archaeology is more commonly devoted to the study of human societies and is regarded as one of the four branches of anthropology. The other three branches are cultural anthropology, which studies behavioural, symbolic, and material dimensions of culture; linguistics, which studies language, including the origins of language and language groups; and physical anthropology, which includes the study of human evolution and physical and genetic characteristics. Other disciplines also supplement archaeology, including paleontology, paleozoology, paleoethnobotany, paleobotany, geography, geology, art history, and classics. Archaeology has been described as a craft that enlists the sciences to illuminate the humanities.
In the study of relatively recent cultures by Western scholars, archaeology is closely allied with ethnography. This is the case in large parts of North America, Oceania, Siberia, and other places where the study of archaeology mingles with the living traditions of the cultures being studied. In the study of cultures that were literate or had literate neighbours, history and archaeology supplement one another for broader understanding of the complete cultural context.
Current archaeological theory now borrows from a wide range of influences, including neo-Darwinian evolutionary thought, phenomenology, postmodernism, agency theory, cognitive science, Functionalism, gender-based and Feminist archaeology, and Systems theory.
