What is archaeology?• Archaeology is the
study of past human life
Archeologist Matt Mattson holds a rock that may have been used as a hammering tool between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago.
Working Together Archaeologists are scientists who learn about early people - study traces of early settlements, prehistoric people - figure out the age, meaning of artifacts—human-made
objects (from the past)
Anthropologists study culture—way of life of a group of people
- study beliefs, common language, shared ways of doing things
Studying Fossils Evidence of early people can be
found in fossils - fossils—remains of early life
preserved in ground - human fossils include pieces of
teeth, skulls, other bones
Archaeologists try to figure out ages of fossil remains, and artifacts
EQ: How do we learn about Archaeology? Archaeologists have three major
ways of learning about a civilization, they are:
1. Research
2. Fieldwork
3. Laboratory Analysis
1. Research
Archaeologists use two methods to find out what an artifact is and how it was used:
• Historical Approach• Cross-cultural Comparison
How do we know what an artifact is?
Method #1: Historical Approach
Watching how people in modern times use a similar object (living in the same area)
Method #2: Cross-Cultural ComparisonWatching how people from another culture use a similar object (Today)
2. Fieldwork• After the first research is done,
archaeologists go outdoors and look for archaeological sites—places where artifacts are found
• Archaeologists usually know where to look for these sites.
3. Laboratory Analysis• Laboratory Analysis can be used to
find out what an artifact is made of and how old it is.
• A common method of finding the age of an artifact is radiocarbon dating, which can find the age of something that was once alive.