I.

Introduction

Archaeology (Greek arkhaiologia, or “discourse about ancient things”), the study of the human past through the material traces of it that have survived. The term “human past” needs to be stressed, because archaeologists do not, contrary to popular belief, study rocks or the remains of dinosaurs. Those are the realm of geologists and palaeontologists.

Archaeology starts at the point at which the first recognizable artefacts (tools made by humans) appear—on current evidence, that was in East Africa about 2.5 million years ago—and stretches right up to the present day, industrial archaeology, for example, being concerned with the machinery and installations of very recent times (see Industrial Revolution). Although the majority of archaeologists study the remote past (hundreds or thousands of years back in time), increasing numbers are turning to more recent historical periods and even quite modern phenomena.

The fundamental challenge of the archaeologist is to make meaningful sense of the past from what little has survived; in the great majority of sites, only a minute fraction of what originally existed has survived, the size of that fraction depending on the ravages of climate, the kind of soil in which objects were deposited, how quickly they became buried, and whether they underwent any disturbance before or after burial. The age of a site is also a critical factor. At most sites, only durable inorganic objects survive—primarily stone, pottery, and certain metals. In other words, what is known as the archaeological record is a highly incomplete, hugely distorted sample of what once existed.

II.

Historical Background

Humans have probably always been curious about the traces left by their predecessors. There are many cases of ancient cultures seeming to have collected or even venerated even more ancient objects. By the Middle Ages, people in Europe were becoming intrigued by what they referred to as “magic crocks”, pots (probably cremation urns) that mysteriously emerged from the ground through erosion or the actions of burrowing animals. At the same time, humanly made flints and polished stone axes were constantly turning up as farmers ploughed their fields. According to popular belief, these were elf-shot or thunderbolts, and in fact they were venerated and collected by peoples as far afield as Africa and India, often being used as amulets or charms. In Europe, many such flints and axes found their way into the “Cabinets of Curiosities”, collections of natural and artificial objects put together by early antiquaries, and the realization slowly dawned in more enlightened minds that these “thunderbolts” and “magic crocks” were in fact the humanly made relics of ancient peoples. At the same time, discoveries of Greek and Roman sculpture were inspiring contemporary artists to study Classical forms, while wealthy families of Europe began to collect and display Classical antiquities (see Greek Art and Architecture; Roman Art and Architecture).

It was in the 16th century that, in north-western Europe, some scholars began to recognize that information about the ancient past could be derived from the study of field monuments; a whole series of antiquaries in Britain, Scandinavia, and elsewhere started to visit and describe ancient monuments. In the 17th and 18th centuries this grew into a more systematic interest, accompanied by increasing numbers of excavations. While most digs were intended merely to retrieve objects from the ground, a few pioneers treated the work like a careful dissection, noting the relationships of artefacts to different layers of soil, and realizing that, in general, objects from upper layers must be more recent than those from layers below.

It was really only in the early to mid-19th century that archaeology took over from antiquarianism, in the sense that it aspired to take a systematic and scientific approach to the vestiges of the human past. This was the period when the great antiquity of humankind was first established, through discoveries in western Europe of stone tools in association with now extinct animals, and eventually became generally accepted. By the end of the 19th century, true archaeology was already a flourishing enterprise, with many of the great figures of the early decades of the discipline hard at work in the field—Flinders Petrie in Egypt, Robert Koldewey at Babylon, Heinrich Schliemann in the Aegean, and General Pitt-Rivers in Britain. For most of these pioneers, archaeology was no longer a treasure hunt but a search for information, and a means of answering specific questions about the past.

Through the 20th century, thanks to the efforts of a succession of major figures (such as Sir Mortimer Wheeler in Britain and India, George Reisner and Leonard Woolley in the Near East, Max Uhle and Alfred Kidder in America, François Bordes and André Leroi-Gourhan in France) archaeology has become a massive, multi-disciplinary undertaking, drawing on the expertise of many fields, from geophysics and aerial photography (see Photographic Techniques), to zoology, botany, chemistry, genetics, and a whole gamut of sciences that can produce dates from archaeological material or from the sediments that enclose it.

There have been two major trends over time. First, excavation has become far slower and more painstaking: instead of cutting through archaeological layers indiscriminately with pickaxes, as in the past, each layer is now carefully shovelled, scraped, or brushed away, and the very soil is sieved so as not to lose any scrap of information that the detritus might hold. The second is that archaeologists are not only unearthing ever larger quantities of material of all kinds but that, thanks to the development of new techniques and scientific analyses, far more can be learnt from this material. Take, for instance, a single potsherd. In the past, a sherd would simply have been classed as a type, based on its shape, material, and decoration, if any. Now, however, a detailed breakdown of its raw materials can be obtained, enabling their source to be pinpointed; one can learn at what temperature it was fired, and with what material it was tempered; the pot can be directly dated by the technique of thermoluminescence, and other methods can be used to analyse the faintest traces of residues on its inner surface, and thus show what it used to contain. In short, as archaeology develops, it is doing much more with far less.

III.

Dating Methods

Relative dating and historical dating were the only two methods of establishing the chronology of periods or of artefacts in the more remote past. However, such scientific methods as varve analysis, dendrochronology, and, most recently, radiocarbon dating were developed and used to provide absolute dates, albeit within varying limits of accuracy.

A.

Relative Dating

Relative dating, which is based primarily on stratigraphy (the study of how layers or deposits accumulate in chronological sequence), simply involves placing objects, and by extension events and cultural periods, into an isolated historical sequence. For example, it could be shown that the Iron Age followed the Bronze Age, and that the Bronze Age was in turn preceded by the Stone Age; it could not, however, be established when these periods began and ended.

The secondary basis of relative dating is typology—the grouping of objects into types that share the same attributes, be they material, shape, or decoration, or a combination of these. As a dating method, the value of typology rests on two basic concepts: that objects from a given time and place must share a recognizable style, and that changes in style are fairly gradual. Collections of different but contemporaneous objects can also be grouped together in an assemblage, and various assemblages arranged in sequences and compared with those from other areas.

Other relative chronologies are based on the succession of climatic phases (glacials, interglacials, stadials, and interstadials) that occurred during the last ice age. Pollen from deposits also produces sequences of climatic and vegetational change, but these tend to be fairly localized. Faunal dating—based on the presence of the bones of different species of animal—was also an important method, particularly for Pleistocene archaeology (the study of the last ice age), as remains of species indicative of colder or warmer climates appear and disappear from the stratigraphy.

B.

Historical Dating

Historical dating is based on the equation of the archaeological record with dates provided in written chronologies and calendars compiled by ancient peoples. Many of these calendars, such as those of the Chinese, Egyptians, and Romans, were based on reignal years—the years of rule of their dynasties, kings, consuls, or emperors. The Egyptian dynasties, for example, can be dated by working back from the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great that Greek historians recorded as having taken place in 332 bc; from this sequence, it is possible to establish more or less accurate life dates of the Egyptian pharaohs. These texts are still of enormous importance today.

By these means certain objects, such as stones bearing inscriptions referring to events or rulers, or coins of the Roman and medieval periods that carry the name of a current ruler, and the archaeological context in which they are found, can be matched to a specific period. Of course, matching an object to a historical date does not necessarily date the layer in which that object was found—for example, a coin can be passed around or hoarded for decades or centuries—but it does at least give a maximum age for the layer: it cannot be older than the date on the coin (unless the coin is intrusive) but could on the other hand be much younger.

C.

Absolute Dating

C.1.

Varve Analysis and Dendrochronology

Varve analysis and dendrochronology are two methods of absolute dating that are reliable but limited because they are very localized, that is, they can only be applied to restricted geographical areas. Varves are deposits of clay that were laid down annually by melting ice sheets. They vary in thickness from year to year, a warmer year causing increased melting and hence a thicker layer. By measuring the successive thicknesses of a series of varves and comparing the sequence with the pattern in other areas, long sequences can be linked together that stretch back thousands of years.

Dendrochronology (the analysis of the annual growth-rings in trees) is based on a similar principle. A sequence of rings of varying thickness, the variation caused by local climatic fluctuations, can be built up by overlapping samples taken from trees of different ages. Unbroken sequences stretching back to 8000 bc have been established for Germany, for example, so that timbers used in ancient settlements can be compared and their age pinpointed. Results of amazing precision are now emerging. In Britain, analysis of timber from a Neolithic plank walkway in Somerset known as the Sweet Track which was constructed across a swamp, suggests that it was built during the winter of 3807/3806 bc

C.2.

Radiocarbon Dating

Radiocarbon dates are obtained by taking samples from organic materials (such as charcoal, wood, seeds, and human or animal bone) and measuring the amount of the radioactive isotope Carbon 14 (C14) that they contain. Organic materials absorb C14 throughout their lives and steadily lose it after they die. Thus the less C14 that remains in a sample, the older that sample is, and since the rate of radioactive decay can be measured, an accurate date can be given; however, radiocarbon dating is effective only for obtaining dates between about ad 600 and, with an increasing margin of error, about 50,000 bc.

Radiocarbon dating revolutionized archaeology, mainly because of its comparative accuracy and the fact that it can be applied to a range of organic materials from anywhere in the world, regardless of climate. It has established chronologies for areas that previously lacked timescales of any kind. However, the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere is now known to have varied through time, largely because of changes in the Earth’s magnetic field (see Earth: Magnetic Poles). Radiocarbon dates can be plotted against tree-ring dates to produce calibration curves, or graphs that show the changing degree of error in radiocarbon dates over time back to 7000 bc.

C.3.

Other Methods

The Potassium/Argon method, which can date rocks in volcanic areas, is useful for dating early sites, such as those in Africa (notably Olduvai Gorge) at which fossilized bones of early humans have been found. Elsewhere, uranium series dating can be applied to rocks rich in calcium carbonate, such as stalagmites in caves. Thermoluminescence (TL) dating can be used on pottery, the most abundant inorganic material found at archaeological sites of the last 10,000 years, and other inorganic materials such as burnt flint. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) can even be used on certain sediments containing archaeological material; deposits in northern Australian rock shelters dated by OSL to 53,000 to 60,000 years ago provide crucial evidence for the early arrival in this continent of humans who were clearly not British convicts (see Aborigines). Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) can be used on the teeth of humans and animals dating from periods far outside the range of C14. For a fuller account, see Dating Methods.

IV.

The Archaeological Record

A.

Sites

The raw materials of archaeology consist of sites, artefacts, and human remains. An archaeological site is any spot on the landscape with detectable traces of human activity. Sites range from minor scatters of artefacts indicating a brief encampment of a few hours (such as those around Lake Mungo) to the enormous tells (mounds) of the Near East consisting of the remains of successive towns or cities piled up upon one another and spanning thousands of years (such as Ur, Babylon, or Uruk). Not all sites are dwelling places: they may be butchering areas, or quarries where raw materials were obtained; or they may be burials, monuments, rock-art sites, or sacred places where worship took place. Still other sites are ceremonial centres, such as those of the Inca, Maya, and Aztec.

B.

Artefacts

The bulk of the archaeological record is made up of humanly made artefacts. Thus stone tools are enormously important to the study of the Palaeolithic period. However, stone tools are virtually indestructible, whereas organic materials—bone, antler, wood, leather, sinew, ropework, basketwork, and featherwork—decay under most normal conditions. It is noteworthy that analysis of the wear on many Palaeolithic stone tools indicates that they were used for the procurement or working of organic materials, suggesting that a large part of the Palaeolithic tool kit is lost forever.

However, arid, frozen, and certain waterlogged conditions (which all inhibit the action of destructive micro-organisms) can aid the preservation of organic materials. Thanks to the aridity of desert environments, bodies in shallow prehistoric graves in Egypt have survived with skin, hair, and nails intact, even without mummification; burials in coastal Peru are similarly well preserved, together with the textile shrouds in which the dead were wrapped. Natural refrigeration has likewise preserved bodies in Altai tombs in southern Siberia to such an extent that not only the tattoos on the skin of the bodies but also fragile materials such as leather and felt have survived.

Growing numbers of archaeologists are turning to wetland sites—in bogs, lakes, or other watery environments—where one can likewise find preserved the organic materials that have usually decayed and disappeared at sites in dry land. The most extreme kind of waterlogged site is, of course, to be found beneath the sea. Underwater archaeology has tackled drowned cities, sunken harbours, and shipwrecks. In 2000 archaeologists reported the discovery of two separate sets of underwater ruins. One site in Lake Titicaca was estimated to be between 1,000 and 1,500 years old and included a crop terrace, a road, and a wall some 800 m (2,624 ft) long. The second discovery was of a rectangular structure containing well-preserved artefacts 95 m (312 ft) below the surface of the Black Sea. Since, when dealing with shipwrecks, it is rarely feasible to lift an entire vessel to the surface to transport it to land, as in the case of the Mary Rose in Britain and the Vasa in Sweden, much of the archaeological work has to be done under water. This can be hazardous and difficult, as well as long and expensive, but the rewards are great, thanks to the yield of well-preserved organic remains, as well as new knowledge of shipbuilding, trade routes, and maritime traffic. Shipwrecks are invaluable time capsules, struck by disaster at one frozen moment in the past, in the midst of their everyday operations.

C.

Human Remains

Human remains can provide some of the most direct evidence about the human past. Depending on their completeness and state of preservation, human remains can show the age and sex of the deceased, their appearance, their state of health, sometimes the cause of death, and in some cases even their family relationships. The vast majority of surviving human remains are skeletons or cremations. However, a number of more or less intact bodies are also known: they have survived by desiccation (Peru), by freezing (as in the case of the Iceman), by being submerged in a peat bog (as in the case of the numerous bog bodies of north-western Europe), or by purposeful mummification (as in the case of many royal Egyptian burials). Through the application of a vast range of tests, ranging from forensic examinations to computer scans and endoscopy, these bodies can reveal a wealth of information concerning diseases and parasites, diet, occupation and injury, clothing, and physical appearance.

V.

Experimental Archaeology

The aims of experimental archaeology are to identify certain activities with certain traces in the archaeological record by attempting to recreate the circumstances and methods of those activities. For example, different kinds of stone tools have been copied, and used for specific tasks, so that the resulting traces and wear-patterns can be assessed and compared with those on archaeological specimens. In addition, the replication of stone tools reveals a great deal about original manufacturing techniques. An even simpler way to gain insights into manufacture is to fit ancient stone tools back together again: this refitting can produce spectacular results that enable every stage of the production process to be followed. This technique was used at a prehistoric 'tool factory' discovered in Kenya's Rift Valley in 1999. Reuniting chips with the stones they had been struck from revealed tool-making techniques at the 2.3-million-year-old site that demonstrated the hominids of that time were capable of far more manual dexterity than had previously been thought.

Many of the experimental procedures used in the study of stone tools are also carried out when investigating the technology of other materials and of later periods—such as woodwork, fibres and textiles, pottery, glass-making, and different kinds of metalworking. In fact this experimental archaeology has now become a major sub-discipline. One of the longest-running projects is Butser Hill Farm, in Hampshire, southern England, which was set up in 1972 with the aim of recreating an Iron Age farm in which a community lived and carried out such tasks as hut-building, farming, butchering, the storage of grain, metalworking, and making pottery and stone tools with replicas of Iron Age equipment and by methods supposed, from the archaeological record, to have been used during the Iron Age.

VI.

Ethnoarchaeology

A related but less active approach to this kind of work is ethnoarchaeology, in which archaeologists seek to obtain information about the past by observing present-day peoples. Research carried out among the Inuit by Lewis Binford has shed light on the practices of ancient hunter-gatherer societies. The making of pottery has also proved particularly popular in ethnoarchaeological studies: questions asked include how, when, why, and by whom vessels are made; how much time and effort are invested in them; why they are decorated in certain ways; how often and in what circumstances they get broken; and how and where they are discarded. Archaeology is supremely interested in everyday activities such as these.

VII.

Environmental Archaeology

Environmental archaeology examines the relationship between human societies and the natural world and takes as its point of departure the premise that environment governs human life. In recent decades archaeologists have begun to take a close interest in such evidence as pollen grains, sediments, and rodent, snail, or insect remains in order to reconstruct various ancient environments as accurately as possible.

Subsistence—the quest for food—is the most fundamental necessity of human life, and archaeology has developed many ways to investigate the clues to what people ate. The vast majority of these clues take the form of animal and plant remains that may be found in a human occupation site, and that are studied by zoo-archaeologists and archaeo-botanists respectively.

In recent years, sophisticated new chemical techniques have been developed that can detect and often identify food residues on tools and inside vessels. Chemical analysis of residues in vessels has identified such substances as milk, cheese, and fat. Evidence can also be recovered from the alimentary tracts of preserved bodies or from human faeces.

Teeth are made of two of the hardest tissues in the body, so they usually survive in good condition. Microscopic examination of the surface of human teeth reveals abrasions and scratches that, through comparison with the teeth of people such as the meat-eating Inuit or the vegetarian Melanesians, can be related to meat or vegetation in the diet. Tooth decay can also be informative, indicating a reliance on starchy and sugary foods.

The greatest breakthrough, however, has come through the realization that chemical analysis of human bone collagen can reveal much about long-term diet. Different categories of plants contain different ratios of certain isotopes of carbon, or nitrogen, and when plants are eaten these ratios become fixed in bone tissue. Analysis of bone collagen can show whether marine or land plants predominated in the diet, and hence land or marine resources of other kinds. When human bones from different periods are available, the technique is useful for detecting change through time.

VIII.

Archaeology of the Mind

Many scholars are currently seeking to develop a framework for analysing the cognitive aspects of early societies, especially of those that did not develop a system of writing and that therefore did not produce texts which might shed light on their thought processes. This branch of archaeology seeks to investigate how early societies described and measured their world, how they planned and laid out their monuments and towns, and which materials they prized highly and presumably considered to be symbols of wealth and power. In particular, it seeks to examine the material remains of religion, which may be expressed through art. As is known from modern studies of tribal peoples, religious activities are often of paramount importance to the life of a society; indeed, there is usually no clear dividing line between the sacred and the secular. It is fairly obvious from what we know of tribal art today that prehistoric art must have served many purposes, encompassing games, narratives, graffiti, messages, creation and other myths, and religion. Some of it is public, on open view in outdoor locations; some is intensely private, hidden away in recesses or deep caves (see Palaeolithic Art).

It can be argued that rock art is the earliest form of proto-writing, since at times it certainly appears to have been used to record and transmit information. For the cognitive archaeologist the picture becomes much clearer where real scripts are available. Their decipherment is a highly specialized skill. While it is easy to take for granted the fact that many ancient scripts can now be read, this is only as the result of some notable breakthroughs; Egyptian hieroglyphs, cuneiform (the script used by ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia), and Linear B (used by the Minoan civilization) were all unreadable until their decipherment by Jean-François Champollion, German and British scholars, and Michael Ventris respectively. The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs is still in its infancy, and the pictographic writing used by the Indus Valley Civilization remains the world’s most mysterious undeciphered script.

However, while ancient texts provide a great deal of valuable information about cognitive aspects of ancient societies, they are a complement to archaeology rather than a substitute for it.

An entire area of cognitive archaeology is taken up with archaeoastronomy, the study of ancient knowledge of celestial phenomena. The subject really comes into its own in later prehistory with the phenomenon of monuments aligned in such a way as to interact with significant astronomical events, such as the rising of the Sun at the solstice and equinox (see Ecliptic). From the prehistoric megalithic monuments of western Europe (such as Stonehenge and Callanish) to major buildings in the Central and South American civilizations (such as Tiahuanacu), such alignments demonstrate a profound knowledge of, and importance attached to, the movements of the heavens.

Some cognitive aspects of society can also be assessed from the existence of symbols of power, ranging from giant statues of rulers down to rich clothing or body decoration. Rare or precious materials are usually indicative of high status, as are fine objects that are beautifully made but could never have been used for their apparent purpose (friable axes, sheet-bronze shields, wafer-thin stone spear-points). Burials containing such prestige goods can plausibly be interpreted as those of rich and powerful people, and serve to underline social hierarchy. Remarkable examples include the tomb of Tutankhamen and the terracotta army of the emperor Shi Huangdi.

Religion is often presumed to have been used as another means of reinforcing social hierarchy. The importance of religion and the expense devoted to it, in terms of human labour and raw materials, may be identified in special buildings set apart for sacred functions, fixtures such as altars, and the paraphernalia of ritual, such as gongs, bells, and lamps. Water is often involved in rites, so pools or basins may be of significance; and the sacrifice of animals or humans could be practised. Cult images and symbols can be apparent, together with depictions of people in what looks (to our eyes) like an act of adoration, while votive offerings of food or objects (often broken or hidden) may be found. Important religious buildings or centres are also often associated with great wealth in terms of contents and decoration.

IX.

Settlement and Society

Determining what kind of settlement an archaeological site represents is of primary importance, since type of settlement is indicative of type of society. In order to interpret the material, archaeologists have devised four broad social categories: bands, segmentary societies (or tribes), chiefdoms, and states.

Bands are small-scale societies of hunters, gatherers, and fishers, usually numbering fewer than 100 people. They often move around with the seasons, exploiting primarily or exclusively wild resources, so their sites tend to be seasonally occupied camps, together with smaller, more specialized activity areas such as kill or butchery sites, or worksites for making tools, often of stone. Depending on their surroundings, they live in cave entrances or rock shelters, or construct temporary shelters of organic materials such as wood, bone, or hides. The base camps are generally more substantial than the temporary or specialized sites. This kind of settlement is associated with the Palaeolithic period of the Old World (see Stone Age), and the Palaeo-Indian period of the New World (see Native Americans).

Tribes comprise up to a few thousand people, who tend to be settled farmers, though some are pastoralists with a mobile economy. Their life is based primarily on domesticated plants or animals, or both. They occupy settled agricultural homesteads or villages, which collectively form a settlement pattern of fairly evenly spaced sites of similar size, so that no one settlement appears to dominate. This kind of system is associated with the first farmers of both the Old and New World (see Origins of Farming).

It is in chiefdoms, which normally consist of between 5,000 and 20,000 people, that the first real signs of differences in social status become apparent. The ranking system depends on how closely related individuals are to the chief, but there is no true class structure. The chief is the pivot of the whole system, employing craft specialists, and redistributing to his retainers and subjects the offerings of crafts and foodstuffs that he periodically receives from them. The burials of chiefs and their relatives tend to contain very rich grave goods.

Chiefdoms generally have a centre of power, with temples, chiefly residences, and craft specialists. This permanent ceremonial centre, designed for ritual, acts as a focus for the population, but it is not a city with a bureaucracy: those are features that are associated with the fourth and last stage.

The distinction between chiefdoms and early states is not always clear-cut. In developed states, the ruler (a king or queen, sometimes deified) has authority to establish laws and enforce them with an army. Society is stratified into different classes, with farm-workers and poor urban dwellers forming the lower stratum, craft specialists occupying an intermediate position, and priests and relatives of royalty forming the ruling class. Because taxes are levied, a bureaucracy is required. The complex redistribution of tribute and revenue to government, army, and craft specialists is one of the distinguishing features of states.

An urban settlement pattern, with a large population centre of more than 5,000 inhabitants and with large public buildings and temples, is indicative of a state. A settlement hierarchy, with the capital at the heart of a network of subsidiary centres and small villages, can also often be discerned.

Archaeologists normally obtain information about settlement patterns from a thorough study of what has already been found in an area over many years. However, in regions where a thorough picture is required, surveys are carried out by having a territory walked systematically by a team in order to record all archaeological traces that are visible on the surface of the ground. The concentrations of material, and their type, give some indication of the kind of sites involved, their size, timespan, and number, and, in some cases, of the hierarchy of settlements. They may be given provisional labels such as “regional centre”, “local centre”, “village”, “hamlet”, “homestead”, “base camp”, or “specialized activity area”.

In a cave or rock shelter once occupied by mobile bands, the occupation deposits may be deep, having built up over centuries or even many millennia, so that excavation needs to focus primarily on the superimposed layers, and how their contents change through time. By contrast, open-air sites left by hunter-gatherers tend to be far less substantial, with little depth of stratigraphy, so that the horizontal aspect is the focus of archaeological attention, tracing the distribution of fireplaces, other features, and artefact clusters. In rare cases where a single, short phase of occupation can be distinguished at a site, it is even possible to gain some insights into precisely what activities were carried out, often in discrete areas, by observing the location of artefacts, toolmaking debris, animal bones, and so forth.

In settlements occupied by segmentary societies, survey and excavation are the basic approaches to locating sites and determining their layout and extent. In a village, some structures are usually excavated completely, with others being sampled to gain some idea of the range of different structures that may be similar dwellings or more specialized buildings. Within the dwellings, it may be possible to recognize areas used for cooking, sleeping, or eating, and perhaps different areas used by males and by females.

The analysis of grave goods or the degree of elaboration in tombs can reveal much about incipient differentiation in social status in segmentary societies, although it is not always easy to distinguish achieved status from inherited status. However, if children are buried with great wealth, it is reasonable to suppose that they inherited that wealth rather than acquired it. Another major source of information for these societies is their public monuments, many of which must have required the mobilization of large numbers of people drawn from a large area. This scale of endeavour, and the very existence of major ritual centres, seems to mark the transition from the simple, egalitarian societies of the first farmers to the more hierarchical chiefdoms that followed.

Another approach to studying the change from segmentary societies to more complex systems is through examining craft specialization. In segmentary societies, craft production was organized primarily at household level, and village sites may be found to contain pottery kilns, or slag from metalworking. However, it is in the more centralized societies of chiefdoms and states that one can see whole quarters of towns and cities devoted almost entirely to such specialized crafts as stoneworking, potting, leather-working, textiles, brewing, metalworking and glass-working.

Naturally, the task of assessing settlement and society is far easier for those periods and cultures where documents or even maps exist. For example, thousands of inscribed tablets and other documents relating to civilizations of the Near East, Egypt, China, the Aegean, and the Classical world detail relationships between different sites and regions, as well as aspects of their economy, laws, royal edicts, and public announcements. From the Sumerian society of Mesopotamia, for example, hundreds of tablets from temples list fields, the crops harvested in them, craftspeople, and dealings in goods such as grain and livestock.

Where written texts are missing (as in most chiefdoms) or inadequate (as in most states), the hierarchy of sites can only be deduced by archaeological means. For example, a capital city or principal centre can be identified from its size, and from signs of central organization such as an archive, a mint, a palace and major religious buildings, or fortifications. It can sometimes be difficult to establish the precise function of large and (presumably) public buildings; temples, for example, can have a social as well as a religious function. Other aspects of cities-such as the areas for specialist artisans, or the differences between rich and poor housing-are easier to identify. Indeed, one of the fundamental distinguishing features of centralized societies is the disparity between rich and poor, not simply in terms of basic wealth but also in terms of access to resources, facilities, and status: in other words, in social ranking.

X.

New Directions

For many years, most archaeologists were content to answer the simpler questions of “what?”, “when?”, “where?”, and “how?”. These questions are still the primary concern of Classical and historical archaeology. However, in the past few decades, theoretical archaeology, which addresses questions of why changes in society occurred, has come into its own, particularly in Britain, Scandinavia, and North America.

In America, one of the 20th century’s most influential thinkers was the anthropologist Julian Steward, who brought to explanations of culture change his understanding of how living cultures work. He focused not only on how cultures interact with each other, but also on how the environment could cause cultural change. The British prehistorian Graham Clark, from the 1930s onward, also developed an ecological approach that departed from the traditional artefact-dominated archaeology of his contemporaries; his emphasis on how human populations adapted to their environments led him to collaborate with specialists in many disciplines who could identify plant and animal remains and reconstruct past environment and subsistence in great detail. This pioneering work laid the foundations for an entire branch of modern archaeology.

By the 1960s, this kind of scientific archaeology was well established. With the availability of absolute dating methods, the aim of research turned away from chronology to focus instead on much more challenging questions. Many younger researchers began to deride the simplistic explanations (such as migrations, invasions, diffusion, or vaguely defined influences) that had traditionally been put forward to explain social or cultural change. The so-called “New Archaeology” of the 1960s demanded that every argument be based on a framework of logic, and on sound, testable assumptions. Emphasis was placed firmly on rational explanation rather than description. Cultures were analysed as systems and subsystems, and great attention was devoted to relations with the environment, with subsistence and the economy, and to interactions between different social units in order to help explain developments through time, and from there help establish general principles that, through examination of the archaeology record, could be applied to human history and prehistory.

The New Archaeology was in its turn, dismissed as functionalist, denigrated for its reliance on ecological explanations and for being over-concerned with the utilitarian aspects of human life. One successor to the New Archaeology is Post-Processual, or Interpretive, Archaeology, which incorporates influences from literary studies and from various areas of history and philosophy. It rejects the generalizations that seemed to be a goal of the New Archaeology, and instead lays emphasis on the uniqueness and diversity of each society and culture. In addition, it asserts that the objectivity that was another goal of the New Archaeology is unattainable, and stresses that there is no single or correct way to interpret the past or to undertake research.

XI.

Conclusion

Archaeology is the only discipline that can investigate the fundamental events in the human past: when, where, and how humankind arose; the origins of agriculture and the domestication of animals; the development of writing, religion, art, and technology; the evolution of complex societies, the earliest cities, and the process of urbanization. Although the picture of these phenomena that it has pieced together inevitably remains incomplete, with much work still to be done, it is in these fields that some of archaeology’s greatest achievements lie, and it has transformed human knowledge in little over a century.