Archaeology and How it is Useful in Historical Analysis

Matthew Zang

      Archaeology is defined as the scientific study of historic or prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments, and other such remains, especially those that have been excavated. The archaeologist's job is not to just dig up cultural sites and to preserve the artifacts they find there, but rather to analyze the remains in relation to their place of discovery, the cultural value of the artifact, and the cultural symbols, if any, on the object. In fact, if archaeologists can NOT dig up a site and analyze it through new technological advances such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), they would much rather do that. The reason is simple; if you dig something up, you must dedicate resources to preserve it!

Photo Courtesy of  https://www.pwnhc.ca

    Archaeology as a tool for historians is useful when studying cultures that do not possess written records of their existence, such as many Native American civilizations of the pre-colonial era. Some of these civilizations did have forms of hieroglyphs and number systems, but all of those that we have found are carved into stone. This is unlike civilizations like the Roman Empire, which left thousands of written documents and official papers that can be analyzed to decipher what was happening during a certain era. If a historian was attempting to write a complete history of Native American civilizations before and after European arrival, they would have to rely mostly on archaeology for the before section and then could start to "read against the grain" with surviving European documents from the time.

Photo Courtesy of http://westerndigs.org

    

    Works Cited:

http://www.lparchaeology.com/prescot/learning/what-tools-do-archaeologists-use

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/archaeology?s=t