History Forum / General / Archaeology / June 2007

Sci.Archaeology, established in May 1991, is an
unmoderated newsgroup dedicated to the discussion
of archaeology in its many aspects.

Charter

   1. To exchange information on various concerns
   in archaeology, including method and theory, pot
   hunting, egyptology, typology, dating, and other
   related topics.

   2. To facilitate ongoing debates and comments on
   ideas or research that may not necessarily be in a
   publishable form.

   3. To query other interested archaeologists about
   resources which could be made generally available.
   (e.g. programs, images, data, references, but not
   exact site locations).

   4. To keep each other informed on upcoming events
   of interest to social science researchers and
   computing in the field of archaeology.

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                   End of charter
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  "Archaeology is the study of past cultural
   behaviour, from the beginnings of the human
   species to events that happened yesterday,
   through the material remains, or artefacts, that
   people leave behind. By carefully applying
   scientific techniques in excavation and analysis
   of their findings, archaeologists attempt to
   reconstruct past lifeways and understand why
   different customs developed and evolved.

   Archaeology is a part of anthropology, because
   it studies individuals and their different cultures,
   even if limited to the past. This is the most
   interesting aspect of archaeology: it is a way to
   understand humanity and ourselves. Archaeology
   is also a part of history, but it is more reliable
   sometimes because while history uses essentially
   written documents, archaeology uses material
   evidence.
   A description of facts can be very precious, but if
   we have only one description, or descriptions
   from only one point of view, we can not be sure to
   know a true part of the past. Individuals in fact
   can lie or simply see things in a convenient way."

   "History is an interpretation of the past based on
   ancient/old writings. Archaeology is different from
   history especially for the methods used. It can
   help and complement history by offering studies
   on materials to be compared with documents to
   have a clearer idea of how the interpretation was
   done. But also archaeology, when beginning from
   an evidence arrives to an inference, interprets
   data; for this reason archaeologists must be
   careful trying to explain the background culture in
   the present they have and which part of the
   evidence they focused: an objective interpretation
   is impossible. History uses archaeology also for
   the periods when written documents were not
   available, particularly prehistory, but more
   extensively for any period for which there are no
   documents available."
Università Ca' Foscari ,Venezia. Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia
http://lettere.unive.it/materiale_didattico/archeologia_egea/1.htm