Archaelogy Isnt Just Digging Up Old Bones
Archaeology is not just digging up old bones. The perception that Archaeology is limited to this one aspect is a superficial stereotype that does not incorporate the huge contributions that Archaeologists make to modern life. Archaeology is the study of human life,culture of the past, and their remains e. g. buildings and graves. Archaeologists plays an important role in finding remains, preserving these remains, interpreting the remains and therefore reconstructing the past and preserve the past. An Archaeologist is a person who studies the past.
They look into the way people lived throughout time. They study where they lived and what the environment they lived in was like, Determine origins and time frame. They analysed the structures. They often find jewellery, pottery, cooking utensils,artefacts,mosaics, buttons, coins and all sorts of items that help the archaeologist determine where and how these people lived. These items can indicate what socio-economic standing these people had in the community. They can find out how the people survived and even how they died by looking at their remains and burial sites.
An example of this was used in the investigation of the ruins of the city of Pompeii. “Fiorell Developed the use of plaster casts to recreate the forms of plants and human bodies” (Nappa,2009). Archaeologists give us access to the entire spectrum of human existence . They give us the knowledge of human history which is not written down. They interpret and analyse hieroglyphics and ancient scripts, they also date objects. They use different techniques to carry out these tasks. An Archaeologist using special tools to conduct and help them in the digging. For example
Antiquarian mapping uses maps from the past, which helps the archaeologist locate where the artefacts may be, if there are no other records of them. They compare the old map with the newer map, and they can work out where they should dig. Another technique used is aerial surveying. Aerial surveying is a geomagnetic method of collection information by using aerial photography or from remote sensing imagery using other bands of electromagnetic spectrum, such as infrared, gamma or ultraviolet. Geographical surveying can be used to see beneath the ground.
This machine can see structures or traces of human activities left in the soil, The instruments can detect buried features when physical properties can not be seen by the naked eye. Resistivity surveying is an electrical current that passes through ground to see what’s there. CAT scans looks inside a object that is solid computer graphics is a graphic created by a computer Some more tools they use are tooth brushes, chisels,paint brushes and many more small tools that can delicately remove the dirt away from the artefacts.
When and archaeologist has determined where to dig they start to transect, which is the proses of removing the grass and digging trenches. They could dig for hours and not find anything, but other times they could dig up to 3 metres under the ground and find anything like a coin, a road, or home wall. Then the Archaeologist will determine the century the object was made in. A lot of the time an archaeologist provides the only mean to learn about the behaviours of the ancient people the hardship they had to go through..
It throws light on the cultural history of various countries and answers various question about the lifestyles of the people who lived in that part of the world. For example of this is an adopted child, who doesn’t know where or who they are, and so they put the pieces together to discover who they are. An archaeologist puts in the hard work to found out what happened in the past, they try to put the pieces of the puzzle together instead of all the information being everywhere . If we didn’t have archaeologist we wouldn’t know how we got to this stage of life.
Knowing about the past can help us to keep moving forward and not to repeat what has already happened. An Archaeologist job is to discover the past, to interpret the meanings of the ancient languages, to determine how life was throughout time. They give us a glimpse of the past Bibliography The best of the time team, Channel four television corp 2008, Channel four international limited. By Acron Media aust (DVD) Ep-Ancaster, Ep-Cirencester Nappo, Dr Salvatore Ciro 2009, Ancient history in depth, BBC, (23/2/10),
