Topic > Importance of archeology for science

Archaeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, and cultural landscapes. Furthermore, archeology Archeology is the study of the ancient and recent human past through material remains. It is a subfield of anthropology, the study of all human culture. From the fossil remains millions of years ago of our first human ancestors in Africa to 20th-century buildings in present-day New York City, archeology analyzes the physical remains of the past in search of a broad and comprehensive understanding of human culture. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Archeology offers a unique perspective on human history and culture that has contributed greatly to our understanding of both the ancient and recent past. Archeology helps us understand not only where and when people lived on earth, but also why and how they lived, examining the changes and causes of changes that occurred in human cultures over time, looking for patterns and explanations of models to explain everything from how and when people first came to inhabit the Americas, to the origins of agriculture and complex societies. Unlike history, which relies primarily on documents and written accounts to interpret major lives and events, archeology allows us to delve far back in time before writing was written. languages ​​existed and to glimpse the lives of ordinary people through analyzing the things they created and left behind. Archeology is the only field of study that covers all time periods and all geographic regions inhabited by humans. It helped us understand important topics such as ancient Egyptian religion, the origins of agriculture in the Near East, colonial life in Jamestown, Virginia, the lives of enslaved Africans in North America, and early Mediterranean trade routes. Furthermore, archeology today can inform us about the lives of individuals, families and communities who would otherwise remain invisible. The father of archaeological excavations was William Cunnington (1754–1810). He undertook excavations in Wiltshire around 1798, financed by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous records of Neolithic and Bronze Age mounds, and the terms he used to classify and describe them are still used by archaeologists today. One of the major achievements of 19th century archeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of ​​superimposed strata dating to later periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars such as William Smith. The application of stratigraphy to archeology first occurred with the excavations of prehistoric and Bronze Age sites. In the third and fourth decades of the 19th century, archaeologists such as Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order. An important figure in the development of archeology into a rigorous science was the army officer and ethnologist Augustus Pitt Rivers, who began excavations on his homeland in England in the 1880s. His approach was highly methodical by the standards of the time and he is widely considered the first scientific archaeologist. He organized his artifacts by type or “typologically,” and within types by date or “chronologically.” This style of arrangement, designed to highlight the evolutionary trends of human artifacts, has been of enormous importance in the accurate dating of objects. His most important methodological innovation was his insistence that, 42(3), 365-380.