Preface

Archaeology is the theory and practice of understanding past civilizations. When we think of this branch of study, we often look to the exploits of the different Egyptian archaeologists who have unearthed the Great Pyramids of Giza or the Sphinx. While these were amazing discoveries, the real goal of archaeology is to understand how people lived. As a few researchers study the great monuments, many more are looking at the lives of those who built them.

In this course, you will learn the trade or practice of archaeology and the different areas of study different archaeological researchers focus on. As it turns out, there are several branches of this field of study you could become involved in. You can study issues as commonplace as dietary habits in a population or as cataclysmic as the abrupt changes occurring during a natural disaster or war. At the end of the course, you should feel as though you understand why the work that archaeologists do is so important.

In the first chapter of this course, we will look at the origins of this field of study. While we often think that archaeology is a relatively recent science, it actually has its origins in the years before the common era. It is probably true that individuals have studied past human lives in past civilizations for much longer than we know of. You will learn that archaeology as a science has existed in China, Greece, Egypt, and Rome for many years, although some of the time it wasn't a true science but was essentially artifact gathering. You will also study how archaeology has evolved over the past few centuries, as we know more about this period of time.

In chapter 2, we look carefully at the different subspecialties and branches of archaeology. You will learn about the science of geology as well as the different areas of study such as maritime archaeology, urban archaeology, and ethnoarchaeology. You'll see how archaeology extends into many other fields of study, including history, anthropology, and the physical sciences.

In chapter three of the course, you get to look into how archaeological questions are approached. The excavation piece is what you might think of most of when you think of archaeology, but it's really just a fraction of the entire picture. You may be surprised to see how much is involved in the whole process, such as asking the right questions first, selecting a site, digging, analyzing, cataloging, and reporting the information. We will also talk about ethics in archaeology and why they are important.

In chapter four, we will talk about fieldwork in archaeology. Some archaeologists use the term to describe their outdoor excavation work only, while others describe either their site selection process only or both of these as being fieldwork. In a sense, fieldwork means the parts of an archaeological research project you need to do in the early and middle stages before you actually begin to analyze information and make your conclusions. Tools are important in archaeology, so we will discuss these too.

In chapter five of the course, you will learn about the evidence you gather at an archaeological dig. There are two main types of evidence, which are artifacts and features. Artifacts are the things you gather and take home, while features are the roads, buildings, and other structures you leave behind. Each of these must be analyzed and preserved. We will talk later about certain types of analysis, such as dating your artifacts; however, this chapter covers many of the basics you need to know and will describe what the different artifacts are called.

Chapter six teaches you about how you establish chronology when you are doing an archaeological dig. There is very little you can do to understand the culture and people you are dealing with until you determine when this culture lived and flourished. There is a concept called relative chronology, which dates things by comparing them with other known dates. Absolute chronology involves more sophisticated testing to try and determine the actual date of your finds without any relative information to go on. You will learn about both of these types of analyses.

In chapter seven of the course, you will learn about how geology and archaeology intersect. There is a field of archaeology called geoarchaeology that looks specifically at geological processes and the effects of these on the buried sites you will be excavating. You will learn about the science of geoarchaeology and how it aids archaeological

investigations. In addition, you can learn about petroglyphs, geoglyphs, and related human activities that are associated with rocks and geology.

In chapter eight, you get to learn more about how archaeologists study skeletons in specific ways that help us understand past cultures and their people. Bioarchaeology is a subspecialty of archaeology that looks specifically at what we can learn from human skeletons. You will also learn the fascinating subject of human evolution and what we know so far about the origin of humankind and ancient migration patterns that have led to the entire world being populated.

In the ninth chapter of this course, you will learn about social systems and early human civilizations and cultures. Humans had advanced social systems that originated thousands of years ago when the first civilizations were created. In this chapter, we will talk about the hunter-gatherer society and how this evolved to more advanced cultures like the ones we have today. Much of what archaeology has been about in the last several centuries has been related to uncovering and understanding the different cradles of civilization that began our modern lives today. You will also learn about the cradles of civilization in this chapter.

The tenth chapter looks at several subfields of archaeology. Environmental archaeology involves primarily the study of plants and animals at archaeological sites. There are specialized techniques used to study these features. The second topic will be the study of urban archaeology, which is the study of the different layers of life beneath larger cities that have been occupied for a long period of time. Maritime archaeology looks at shipwrecks and other underwater archaeological sites. You will learn about this field as well.

The eleventh chapter of the course is another that introduces a specific concept in archaeology but augments it with some cases about how archaeology has been able to solve a historical problem. In this case, it is the study of diseases in our world's past. The area of archaeology involved in this is called paleopathology. You will learn about diseases that existed in ancient times and even in prehistoric times. You will see how these projects have helped us understand how and when some diseases we may even deal with today once originated.

In chapter twelve, you will study battlefield and war-related archaeology. These are subtypes of archaeology that look exclusively at battlefield sites and study areas of the world where there have been possible conflicts, including the torture of citizens and other atrocities in the past. Unfortunately, amateurs often destroy these sites by taking artifacts they find interesting, ruining the landscape for legitimate archaeologists. Even so, a great deal of information can be gotten about battlefields when the sites are not so disturbed.

Chapter 13 finally allows you to break away from some of the more rigorous parts of archaeology. Instead, you will descend upon a chapter you probably recognize as being some of the fun parts of archaeology. In this chapter, we will talk about the things that have been uncovered regarding ancient artworks. As you will see, most of this is artwork that has been recovered from archaeological sites all over the world. We will also talk about ancient writing that has also come from artifacts gathered at archaeological sites. Finally, while you wouldn't think archaeology is related to religion, you will see that rituals and religious thought are generally a fairly large part of ancient life. This makes it important to archaeology as well.

Chapter fourteen is the final chapter of the course. In this section, you will see archaeology brought to life by looking at some of the major archaeological findings and archaeological sites throughout the world. Not all archaeological sites are suddenly discovered in modern times, but a few have. We will talk about places like Pompeii and the tomb of the terra-cotta army, which were relatively recently discovered after being lost to history for many centuries. In this chapter, archaeological sites from different corners of the world shed light on how the people lived and why the archaeological site exists today at all.