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.