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New Technology in Archaeology
the archaeology of urban places. Rescue archaeology was developed, which helped commercial developers get their building sites excavated before potentially damaging important areas of history by building on them.
Interestingly, the bombed out cities of World War II allowed archaeologists to have a unique chance to take a closer look at these European cities and their pasts prior to rebuilding the city. This branch of archaeology was called urban archaeology, which focuses on areas of large populations that live for long periods of time in smaller areas, such as cities. When these were excavated, a large amount of information was gotten about life in these European cities years ago.
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NEW TECHNOLOGY IN ARCHAEOLOGY
As technology expanded everywhere, it also expanded into the world of archaeology. Archaeologists began using radiocarbon dating or carbon-14 dating in order to date artifacts. You need to understand that carbon dating can only be done on carbon based organic matter. It can't be done on anything. It also is limited to being able to date things existing from 10,000 years ago to the present time. Even so, carbon dating became important in archaeology all over the world. A good example of the usage of this technique was in carbon dating the shroud of Turin, which actually came from the Middle Ages.
The ability to do remote-sensing in geophysical surveys as well as the ability to use satellite imagery and aerial photography helped expand archaeology to a much greater degree. Landscapes could be measured with LIDAR, which is a type of Doppler radar using sound to measure landscapes. Magnetometry and things like ground penetrating radar allowed archaeologists to actually see beneath the earth before they even started excavating. Large Roman villages like Viroconium were completely excavated using this type of technology. Archaeologists were actually able to see the town before they did any digging. The term archaeometry refers to using these types of technology in archaeology.
Finally, genetics and genome sequencing have been used more recently in some cases where living human tissue has been found. In the Alps in 1991, for example, a frozen
man was found with living human tissue that was able to be sequenced. Interestingly, he did not belong to any known population of humans existing today.
