There are many sciences that people study to show them why things work the way they do, archeology teaches people about the different human cultures through the use of recovery, architecture, and artifacts as well as environmental data. The study of archeology helps people understand the humans of the past and how those people changed from the people they were then to the people they have become and why that change was necessary.
When people study archeology there is usually some particular goal or aim that the archeologist wishes to prove or disprove. They may want to discover the history of a certain people, learn about a different culture, get ideas about the societies that were in that area. Many different sciences help to make up the study of Archeology. It involves anthropology, art history, ethnology, geography, geology, chemistry, statistics, paleontology, and many other sciences.
The reason for this study is because many cultures and civilizations have existed, however there is very little writing of histories. In order to find out the truth about the past, and to get a representation of societies that existed during that time. Archeologist are known to find records, that help them prove what peoples did, owned, how they contracted, the laws they had, the way they looked and their everyday life. They learn the type of clergy they may have had, the pets that they kept.
The British were the first to change Archeology from just searching for things to creating a systematic study that it has become today. The church was the first to produce men who were serious about archeological recording even though they did not know what impact keeping these records would have later on for Archeologists of the present.
Many great people would later contribute to the approach such as Thomas Jefferson who would create a method that would revolutionize past techniques for excavation and recording. Because of this he would become the “Father of Archeology.” The techniques that Jefferson employed were way more advanced than anyone of his time had ever used, but no where near the techniques that are used today.
Over the years many archeological geniuses would come up with interesting methods that would allow a more professional and structured way of performing the techniques needed to protect and process artifacts and any other finding that may come from a archeological dig. People like Augustus Pitt Rivers, William Petrie, Mortimer Wheeler, Sir Arthur Evans and many others would fine tune the process to ensure that later archeologist would be able to preserve the art and cultures of yesterday.
