Modern Archaeology

The early 1800s was a time of many archaeological digs in places like Egypt, the ruins of Babylon, and other areas of the Middle East. The aim during that time was just to get artifacts. These were similar to antiquarians in that the artifacts were important but not anything related to context. Nowadays, the artifacts are still important but so is the context in which they are found as well as many other details overlooked in the initial excavations of that time.

MODERN ARCHAEOLOGY

William Cunnington is considered the father of modern archaeological excavations. He undertook many excavations around 1800 in the area of Wiltshire England, which is the place where many ancient monuments have been located. He needed to be funded by wealthy patrons who often took credit for the work. Cunnington was quite meticulous in recording his findings and categorizing what he was able to collect. Some of his terms used in categorizing artifacts are still used today.

Stratigraphy was developed in the 1800s as one of the more modern archaeological techniques. This is something you will learn about in the next chapter. The idea is to have overlapping strata in order to date the things found in the excavation site. Many scholars and archaeologists used this technique in order to unearth sites from the bronze age. Other archaeologists were able to put their findings in chronological order, which obviously helped understand the uses of these objects in past times.

This was the first period of time where the idea of deep time was first developed. You need to remember that most people believe the Old Testament and fell for the idea that the earth was born on a Sunday on October 23, 4004 BC. This belief lasted until approximately 1850 when archaeologists began to understand that the earth was much older than this.

At that time, in about 1850, archaeology was not a science of any kind. People thought it was much like an amateur pastime and in fact many amateurs went about unearthing all sorts of antiquities without regard to where they came from or their historical significance. In the years that followed, a man named Augustus Pitt Rivers started to transform archaeology into a much more rigorous scientific field.

Rivers owned a great deal of land that he inherited in Great Britain. This area had numerous important archaeological findings that he started to unearth. Many came from the Roman or Saxon periods. It took him seventeen seasons to fully excavate these areas, mostly in the late 1880s. He was meticulous about his excavations and felt others should to do the same. For his work, he has been regarded as the father of British archaeology and many consider him the first true scientific archaeologist.

Rivers was strongly influenced by the work of Charles Darwin and the work of Herbert Spencer. Both of these men were very interested in categorizing things in certain ways. Rivers began organizing his artifacts according to their chronology and type. Using this method, he was able to see various trends in how tools evolved over time. His work also helped others trying to date their own artifacts. He insisted on collecting all artefacts and considered everything important, not only those that were different or particularly beautiful. He had a strong focus on everyday objects, which furthered the understanding of how people lived in past times.

Another major player of that time in archaeology was William Flinders Petrie. He is also a strong consideration to be called the father of archaeology. He studied and excavated the great pyramid in Egypt during his travels there in the 1880s. Before this, many have wondered how these great structures were created. William Flinders Petrie was able to disprove the current theories and find data used today to study the pyramids.

He was also meticulous in recording the artifacts he found and was able to develop strategies used in modern times when it comes to recording archaeological information. He believed that no small detail should be left out and that everything should be recorded. He was able to date pottery using layered technology. He was also a great teacher who taught many of the later Egyptologists who worked in the 1900s in Egypt.

The concept of stratigraphy in archaeology was made more popular by the work of Heinrich Schliemann, who excavated the ancient city of Troy along with several others. It's quite fascinating to understand that they were able to unearth nine different cities on that same site that dated from prehistoric times to approximately the Hellenistic period. He did receive quite a bit of criticism in doing what he did, partly because it was felt that they basically leveled the entire city during the excavation process.