Aerial archaeology
Aerial archaeology is the study of archaeological remains by examining them from altitude. Early investigators attempted to gain birdseye views of sites using hot air balloons, photographs may be taken either vertically, that is from directly overhead, or obliquely, meaning that they are taken at an angle. In order to provide an effect, an overlapping pair of vertical photographs, taken from slightly offset positions. The advantages of aerial photographs to archaeologists are manifold, large sites could for the first time be viewed accurately, in their entirety and within their landscape. This aided the production of plans and inspired archaeologists to look beyond the discrete monument. Photos are taken vertically for the purposes of planning and spatial analysis, through the process of photogrammetry, vertical photos can be converted into scaled plans. Archaeological features may be visible from the air than on the ground. In temperate Europe, aerial reconnaissance is one of the most important ways in which new archaeological sites are discovered and these are referred to as shadow marks.
Frost can appear in winter on ploughed fields where water has naturally accumulated along the lines of buried features, in cases like the Nazca lines, the features are meaningless from the ground but easily visible from the air. Aerial archaeology is used in the processes of research and investigation in aviation archaeology, archaeological field survey Cropmark Shadow marks Xenoarchaeology Bibliography Bourgeois, J. and Meganck, M. Aerial Photography and Archaeology 2003. ISBN 90-382-0782-4 Brophy, K. and Cowley, D, from the air, understanding aerial archaeology. ISBN 0-7524-3130-7 Riley, D. N. Air photography and archaeology, ISBN 0-8122-8087-3 Wilson, D. R. Air photo interpretation for archaeologists, The History Press Ltd. ISBN 0-7524-1498-4 Aerial Archaeology Research Group Emporia State University, Aerial Archaeology Aerial and Remote Sensing Archaeology Link, aerialArchaeology. com focuses heavily on near-earth imaging technologies such as kite aerial photography, remote-control powered parachutes and model airplanes and helicopters.
*** Off-line April 20,2010 *** ACE Foundation Kite Aerial Photographers - Archaeology Sir Henry Wellcome Aerial Archaeology in Northern France
Primatology
Primatology is the scientific study of primates. There are two centers of primatology, Western primatology and Japanese primatology. These two divergent disciplines stem from their cultural backgrounds and philosophies that went into their founding. Although, both Western and Japanese primatology share many of the principles, the areas of their focus in primate research. Western primatology stems primarily from research by North American and European scientists, the study of primatology looks at the biological and psychological aspects of non-human primates. The focus is on studying the links between humans and primates. It is believed that by understanding our closest animal relatives, we might understand the nature shared with our ancestors. The general belief is that the observation of nature must be either extremely limited. Either way, the observers must be neutral to their subjects and this allows for data to be unbiased and for the subjects to be uninfluenced by human interference. Field is done in natural environments, in which scientific observers watch primates in their natural habitat, laboratory study is done in controlled lab settings.
In lab settings, scientists are able to perform controlled experimentation on the learning capabilities, in semi-free ranging studies, scientists are able to watch how primates might act in the wild but have easier access to them, and the ability to control their environments. Such facilities include the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Georgia, all types of primate study in the Western methodology are meant to be neutral. Although there are certain Western primatologists who do more subjective research, early field primatology tended to focus on individual researchers. Researchers such as Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall are examples of this, long-term sites of research tend to be best associated with their founders, and this led to some tension between younger primatologists and the veterans in the field. The discipline of Japanese primatology was developed out of animal ecology and it is mainly credited to Kinji Imanishi and Junichiro Itani. Imanishi was an animal ecologist who began studying wild horses before focusing more on primate ecology and he helped found the Primate Research Group in 1950.
Junichiro was a renowned anthropologist and a professor at Kyoto University and he is a co-founder of the Primate Research Institute and the Centre for African Area Studies. The Japanese discipline of primatology tends to be interested in the social aspects of primates
Biblical archaeology
For the movement associated with William F. Albright and known as biblical archaeology, see Biblical archaeology school. The principal location of interest is what is known in the relevant religions as the Holy Land, the scientific techniques used are the same as those used in general archaeology, such as excavation and radiocarbon dating. Biblical archaeology is polemical as there are a number of points of view regarding the nature of its purpose, a number of points of view from important archaeologists are included in the section on Expert Commentaries. In order to understand the significance of biblical archaeology it is first necessary to understand two basic concepts, archaeology as a framework and the Bible as an object for research. Archaeology is a science, not in the Aristotelian sense of cognitio certa per causas and it might be thought that archaeology would have to disregard the information contained within religions and many philosophical systems. This contemporary perception of the myth, mainly developed by Bultmann, has encouraged scientists such as archaeologists to examine the areas indicated by the biblical tales.
Other authors prefer to talk about the archaeology of Palestine and to define the relevant territories as those to the east and west of the River Jordan and this indicates that biblical archaeology or that of Palestine is circumscribed by the territories that were the backdrop to the biblical stories. The raison d’etre of biblical archaeology derives from the fact that it allows an understanding of the peoples that inhabited the Holy Land and it allows an understanding of their history, culture and movements. This makes it possible to know the location of the stories. Albright, G. Ernest Wright and Yigael Yadin, using this approach, introduced by P. Biblical archaeology lends fundamental support to exegetical studies, the geographical area that circumscribes the area of interest for biblical archaeology is obviously the biblical lands, known as the Holy Land. Asia Minor, Macedonia and Rome have greater connections with the stories from the New Testament, in the same way that the spatial criteria vary according to the various points of view of the different researchers, there are a variety of dates that are of interest.
This time period is considered by authorities to be too wide. The term Apostolic Church is taken to mean the period when Jesuss apostles were alive. This period ends with the death of John the Evangelist, the date of his death is not known. However, some consider that the authors of the Fourth Gospel. 8500–4300 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic = c, 8500–6000 BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic A = c. The most important historical sources include Josephus, Eusebius, Egeria or Aetheria, was a Spanish woman who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 381 and 384
Political economy in anthropology
Political Economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Political Economy was introduced in American anthropology primarily through the support of Julian Steward, steward’s research interests centered on “subsistence” — the dynamic interaction of man, technology, social structure, and the organization of work. This emphasis on subsistence and production - as opposed to exchange - is what distinguishes the Political Economy approach, stewards most theoretically productive years were from 1946-1953, while teaching at Columbia University. At this time, Columbia saw an influx of World War II veterans who were attending school thanks to the GI Bill and influenced other scholars such as Elman Service, Marvin Harris and June Nash. Many of these participated in the Puerto Rico Project, a large-scale group research study that focused on modernization in Puerto Rico. Three main areas of interest rapidly developed, the first of these areas was concerned with the pre-capitalist societies that were subject to evolutionary tribal stereotypes.
Sahlins work on hunter-gatherers as the affluent society did much to dissipate that image. The second area was concerned with the vast majority of the population at the time. The third area was on colonialism and the creation of the capitalist world-system, more recently, these political economists have more directly addressed issues of industrial capitalism around the world. Cultural materialism is a research orientation introduced by Marvin Harris in 1968, as a theoretical paradigm, indeed, it is said to be the most enduring achievement of that work. Harris subsequently developed a defense of the paradigm in his 1979 book Cultural Materialism, to Harris, cultural materialism is based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence. Harris approach was influenced by but distinct from Marx, Harris method was to demonstrate how particular cultural practices served a materialistic function. Structural Marxism was an approach to Marxist philosophy based on structuralism, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher Louis Althusser and it was influential in France during the 1960s and 1970s, and came to influence philosophers, political theorists and anthropologists outside France during the 1970s.
French structuralist Marxism melded Marxist political economy with Levi-Strausss structural methodology, eliminating the human subject, dialectical reason, a mode of production consisting of producers, non-producers and means of production, combined in a variety of ways, formed the deep structure of a social formation. A social formation combined several modes of production, only one of which was dominant or determinant, primary anthropological theorists of this school included Maurice Godelier, Claude Meillassoux, Emmanuel Terray and Pierre-Philippe Rey. Structural Marxism arose in opposition to the humanistic Marxism that dominated many western universities during the 1970s, in contrast to Humanistic Marxism, Althusser stressed that Marxism was a science that examined objective structures. Critical influences on Structural Marxism, primarily from the British Marxist historical tradition, Eric Hobsbawm and Raymond Williams. They criticized the functionalist emphasis in Structural Marxism, that individuals in favour of the structural elements of their model
Molecular anthropology
Generally, comparisons are made between sequence, either DNA or protein sequence, however early studies used comparative serology. By examining DNA sequences in different populations, scientists can determine the closeness of relationships between populations, Molecular anthropology has been extremely useful in establishing the evolutionary tree of humans and other primates, including closely related species like chimps and gorillas. However, more recent studies have modified the commonality of 98 percent to a commonality of 94 percent, such information is useful in searching for common ancestors and coming to a better understanding of how humans evolved. There are two continuous linkage groups in humans that are carried by a single sex, the first is the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son. Anatomical females carry a Y chromosome only rarely, as a result of genetic defect, the other linkage group is the mitochondrial DNA. MtDNA can only be passed to the generation by females. The non-recombinant portion of the Y chromosome and the mtDNA, under normal circumstances, part of the Y chromosome can undergo recombination with the X chromosome and within ape history the boundary has changed.
Such recombinant changes in the non-recombinant region of Y are extremely rare, Mitochondrial DNA became an area of research in phylogenetics in the late 1970s. Unlike genomic DNA, it offered advantages in that it did not undergo recombination, the process of recombination, if frequent enough, corrupts the ability to create parsimonious trees because stretches of amino acid subsititions. When looking between distantly related species, recombination is less of a problem since recombination between branches from common ancestors is prevented after true speciation occurs, when examining closely related species, or branching within species, recombination creates a large number of irrelevant SNPs for cladistic analysis. MtDNA, through the process of division, become clonal over time, very little, too often none. While recombination may occur in mtDNA, there is risk that it will be passed to the next generation. As a result, mtDNA become clonal copies of each other, as a result, mtDNA does not have pitfalls of autosomal loci when studied in interbreeding groups.
Another advantage of mtDNA is that the hyper-variable regions evolve very quickly and this allowed the use of mitochondrial DNA to determine that the relative age of the human population was small, having gone through a recent constriction at about 150,000 years ago. Mitochondrial DNA has used to verify the proximity of chimpanzees to humans relative to gorillas. More recently, the genome has been used to estimate branching patterns in peoples around the world, such as when the new world was settled. The problem with these studies have been that they rely heavily on mutations in the coding region, many of the mtDNA have far more mutations and at rarely mutated coding sites relative to expectations of neutral mutations. Mitochondrial DNA offers another advantage over autosomal DNA, there are generally 2 to 4 copies of each chromosome in each cell
Anthrozoology
Anthrozoology is the subset of ethnobiology that deals with interactions between humans and other animals. It is a field that overlaps with other disciplines including anthropology, medicine, veterinary medicine. A major focus of research is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party. It includes scholars from fields such as anthropology, biology, the interaction and enhancement within captive animal interactions. In the UK, the University of Exeter runs an MA in Anthrozoology which explores human-animal interactions from anthropological perspectives, there are now three primary lists for HAS scholars and students—H-Animal, the Human-Animal Studies listserv, and NILAS, as well as the Critical Animal Studies list. There are now over a dozen journals covering HAS issues, many of them founded in the last decade, and hundreds of HAS books, most of them published in the last decade. Brill, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Palgrave-McMillan, University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, beginning in 2011, ASI has partnered with Wesleyan Animal Studies, who will be hosting the fellowship in conjunction with ASI.
There are a handful of HAS conferences per year, including organized by ISAZ and NILAS. Finally, there are more HAS courses being taught now than ever before, the ASI website lists over 300 courses in twenty-nine disciplines at over 200 colleges and universities, not including over 100 law school courses. Animals and Society Institute Anthrozoology Research Group H-Animal Human-Animal Studies listserve Humanimalia, a journal of human-animal interface studies NILAS
Social anthropology
In the USA, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology. Differences among British and American sociocultural anthropologies have diminished with increasing dialogue and cultural anthropologists, and some who integrate the two, are found in most institutes of anthropology. Thus the formal names of institutional units no longer necessarily reflect fully the content of the disciplines these cover, most retain the name under which they were founded. It is differentiated from sociology, both in its methods, and in its commitment to the relevance and illumination provided by micro studies. It extends beyond strictly social phenomena to culture, individuality, many social anthropologists use quantitative methods, particularly those whose research touches on topics such as local economies, human ecology, cognition, or health and illness. The subject has been enlivened by, and has contributed to, approaches from other disciplines, such as philosophy, the history of science, the subject has both ethical and reflexive dimensions.
An example of this is the effect, whereby those being studied may alter their behaviour in response to the knowledge that they are being watched and studied. Social anthropology has historical roots in a number of 19th-century disciplines, including ethnology, folklore studies, savages from the colonies were displayed, often nudes, in cages, in what has been called human zoos. Penniman to write a history of the discipline entitled A Hundred Years of Anthropology, at the time, the field was dominated by the comparative method. It was assumed that all societies passed through an evolutionary process from the most primitive to most advanced. Non-European societies were seen as evolutionary living fossils that could be studied in order to understand the European past. Scholars wrote histories of prehistoric migrations which were sometimes valuable but often fanciful and it was during this time that Europeans first accurately traced Polynesian migrations across the Pacific Ocean for instance - although some of them believed it originated in Egypt.
Finally, the concept of race was actively discussed as a way to classify -, Tylor and James George Frazer are generally considered the antecedents to modern social anthropology in Britain. Tylor advocated strongly for unilinealism and a form of uniformity of mankind, Frazer, a Scottish scholar with a broad knowledge of Classics, concerned himself with religion and magic. His comparative studies, most influentially in the editions of The Golden Bough, analyzed similarities in religious belief. Neither Tylor nor Frazer, were interested in fieldwork, nor were they interested in examining how the cultural elements. The Golden Bough was abridged drastically in subsequent editions after his first, the findings of the expedition set new standards for ethnographic description. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resident on a British colonial possession, theoretically, he advocated a functionalist interpretation, which examined how social institutions functioned to satisfy individual needs
Paleoanthropology
Hominoids are a primate superfamily, the hominid family is currently considered to comprise both the great ape lineages and human lineages within the hominoid superfamily. The Homininae comprise both the human lineages and the African ape lineages, the term African apes refers only to chimpanzees and gorillas. The terminology of the biological family is currently in flux. The term hominin refers to any genus in the human tribe, the great apes were considered the closest relatives of human beings, based on morphological similarity. The science arguably began in the late 19th century when important discoveries occurred that led to the study of human evolution. The discovery of the Neanderthal in Germany, Thomas Huxleys Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature, the modern field of paleoanthropology began in the 19th century with the discovery of Neanderthal man, and with evidence of so-called cave men. Debates between Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen focused on the idea of human evolution, Huxley convincingly illustrated many of the similarities and differences between humans and apes in his 1863 book Evidence as to Mans Place in Nature.
By the time Darwin published his own book on the subject, Descent of Man, even many of Darwins original supporters balked at the idea that human beings could have evolved their apparently boundless mental capacities and moral sensibilities through natural selection. Prior to todays general acceptance of Africa as the root of genus Homo, although Schlosser was very cautious, identifying the tooth only as “. Anthropoide g. et sp. indet. ”He was hopeful that future work would discover a new anthropoid in China. Eleven years later, the Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson was sent to China as a mining advisor and it was he who, in 1918, discovered the sites around Zhoukoudian, a village about 50 kilometers southwest of Beijing. However, because of the nature of the initial finds. Work did not resume until 1921, when the Austrian paleontologist, Otto Zdansky, fresh with his degree from Vienna. Zdansky conducted short-term excavations at Locality 1 in 1921 and 1923, with that done, Zdansky returned to Austria and suspended all fieldwork.
News of the fossil hominin teeth delighted the scientific community in Beijing, at the epicenter of excitement was Davidson Black, a Canadian-born anatomist working at Peking Union Medical College. Black shared Andersson’s interest, as well as his view that central Asia was a home for early humankind. The Zhoukoudian Project came into existence in the spring of 1927, being the first institution of its kind, the Cenozoic Laboratory opened up new avenues for the study of paleogeology and paleontology in China. The Laboratory was the precursor of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Science, the first of the major project finds are attributed to the young Swedish paleontologist, Anders Birger Bohlin, serving as the field advisor at Zhoukoudian. He recovered a left lower molar that Black identified as unmistakably human, the news was at first met with skepticism, and many scholars had reservations that a single tooth was sufficient to justify the naming of a new type of early hominin
Paleoethnobotany
Paleoethnobotany or Archaeobotany, is the study of remains of plants cultivated or used by man in ancient times, which have survived in archaeological contexts. Paleoethnobotany is the archaeological sub-field that studies plant remains from archaeological sites, Plant macrofossils are preserved through four main modes of preservation at archaeological sites. First, plant remains, usually cereal grains, chaff and these are referred to as charred or carbonised plant remains. This mode of preservation is biased towards plant remains that come into contact with fire, through cooking or fuel use, plant remains deposited in permanently waterlogged anoxic conditions are preserved as the absence of oxygen prohibits microbial activity. This mode of preservation occurs in deep archaeological features such as wells, in settlements where organic refuse is rapidly deposited. A wide range of plant remains are preserved, including seeds, fruit stones, leaves, straw. Third, calcium-phosphate mineralisation of plant remains occurs usually in latrine pits and in middens, in latrine pits, plant remains which have been consumed by humans are the most common items, such as seeds of flavourings, fruit pips and fruit stones.
Finally, plant remains are preserved by desiccation in arid environments, delicate vegetative plant remains are preserved, such as onion skin and artichoke bracts, alongside fruit stones, cereal chaff and seeds of wild plants. Paleoethnobotanists use a variety of methods to recover and identify plant remains, charred plant remains are usually recovered by flotation. The matrix is slowly added to agitated water, the soil and other heavy material, known as heavy fraction, will sink to the bottom. The less dense material such as charred seeds, grains. The material that floats to the top, called light fraction, is poured into a sieve, the light fraction is dried and examined under a low power microscope. Samples of the fraction are gathered for analysis. Flotation can be undertaken manually with buckets, or by machine-assisted flotation where water is circulated through a series of tanks by a pump, waterlogged plant remains are separated from the matrix by a combination of wet-sieving and/or small-scale flotation in a laboratory.
Desiccated plant remains are recovered by dry-sieving, using a stack of different sieves to separate larger items such as cereal straw. Identification literature as well as a collection of modern plant materials are crucial for reliable results. Depending on the type of material, and its condition, other methods such as sections or SEM are applied. Paleoethnobotanists recover and analyze microremains and animal excrements, or plant impressions in ceramic sherds, palynology is a mature and distinct scientific discipline that studies pollen, typically in the context of reconstructing past environments
Economic anthropology
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic and cultural scope. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a relationship with the discipline of economics. For the most part, studies in economic anthropology focus on exchange, in contrast, the Marxian school known as political economy focuses on production. Post-World War II, economic anthropology was influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a number of western. Applying formal economic theory to non-industrial societies was mistaken, he argued, in non-industrial societies, exchange was embedded in such non-market institutions as kinship and politics. The Formalist vs Substantivist debate was highly influential and defined an era, neo-substantivists examine the ways in which so-called pure market exchange in market societies fails to fit market ideology. Economic anthropologists have abandoned the primitivist niche they were relegated to by economists and they now study the operations of corporations and the global financial system from an anthropological perspective.
Malinowski carefully traced the network of exchanges of bracelets and necklaces across the Trobriand Islands and he stated that this exchange system was clearly linked to political authority. In the 1920s and later, Malinowskis study became the subject of debate with the French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, malinowski emphasised the exchange of goods between individuals, and their non-altruistic motives for giving, they expected a return of equal or greater value. In other words, reciprocity is an part of gifting. Mauss, in contrast, has emphasized that the gifts were not between individuals, but between representatives of larger collectivities and these gifts were, he argued, a total prestation. Given the stakes, Mauss asked why anyone would give them away and his answer was an enigmatic concept, the spirit of the gift. A good part of the confusion was due to a bad translation, Mauss appeared to be arguing that a return gift is given to keep the very relationship between givers alive, a failure to return a gift ends the relationship and the promise of any future gifts.
Mauss concept of total prestations has been developed in the 20th century by Annette Weiner, malinowski missed this and ignored womens exchanges in his study. Secondly, Weiner has developed Mauss argument about reciprocity and the spirit of the gift in terms of inalienable possessions, Weiner contrasts moveable goods, which can be exchanged, with immoveable goods, which serve to draw the gifts back. She argues that the specific goods given, such as Crown Jewels, are so identified with groups that, even when given. Not all societies, have these kinds of goods, French anthropologist Maurice Godelier pushed the analysis further in The Enigma of the Gift
Aviation archaeology
Aviation archaeology is a recognized sub-discipline within archaeology and underwater archaeology as a whole. It is an activity practiced by enthusiasts and academics in pursuit of finding, documenting and preserving sites important in aviation history. For the most part, these sites are aircraft wrecks and crash sites, the activity dates to post-World War II Europe when, after the conflict, numerous aircraft wrecks studded the countryside. Many times, memorials to those involved in the crashes were put together by individuals, landholders, the United Kingdom, whose land was littered with enemy aircraft, introduced a scrap metal initiative for the public which encouraged its disposal. Members of the public who found aircraft sites, especially farmers who could dig them up, beginning in the 1970s, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, looting of aviation wreck sites began to disturb the general public. As the activity grew and regulations were created in areas to counter problems created, such as trespassing.
Crash sites vary in size and content, some may have fuselages, Remains of military aircraft crash sites may be removed by various aircraft restoration groups, particularly if the aircraft was found largely intact. In general, most recent-day aircraft crashes are removed entirely, due to environmental regulations, for example, military crashes in Arizona originate from numerous air bases and present. Because of the warm and sunny weather, much of the U. S. Army Air Forces flight training was located in the state, numerous air bases dotted the states - creating conditions for numerous training accidents. Old abandoned US Army Air Corp auxiliary fields and those converted to city municipal airports provide archaeological sites to be researched and investigated. The internet is a media for sharing, educating. For identifying aircraft type and manufacturer by part numbers and manufacturing inspection stamps can be analysed, from detailed GPS data & maps, to researching accident reports information, numerous resources help create a complete picture of the historic event.
Accident reports, such as the official US Air Force Accident Report Form 14 becomes the foundation of archaeology research, from there, newspaper articles, county clerk records, sheriff & coroner reports, and library records all aid an aviation archaeologist in their research. Legal protection of aircraft wreck sites is highly variable, in terms of protection by aircraft ownership, the U. S. Navy retains indefinite ownership of all Naval aircraft, including terrestrial or submerged wreck sites. The U. S. Air Force has no policies regarding disturbance of vintage aircraft wreck sites, Sites on federal land are further protected under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 throughout a determination process. The act stipulates that all historic sites must undergo a Section 106 review to determine eligibility for the National Register of Historical Places prior to being disturbed. Federal lands include, among others, National Parks, National Forests, National Marine Sanctuaries, in most cases, the State Historic Preservation Officer will determine whether or not an aviation site is eligible for the register.
The National Register deems aviation wreck sites as “any aircraft that has crashed, damaged, stranded
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.
The discipline involves surveying and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England.
John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture and shield-shapes. Excavations were carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy.
The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
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