Areas of Specialisation
Below are our 30 articles in the 'areas of specialisation' category:
Archaeologists are literally stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the interpretation of archaeological data. The reason it is so difficult harks back to the purpose of ...
Professional archaeologists are employed by universities governments and in private companies. They are also required to fulfil the essential roles inside a museum. Archaeologists who enter museum ...
People have been observing and living by the planets and stars for millenia. The heavenly alignments have been important in the past as a way of predicting seasonal events for planting and harvesting ...
Every museum of ancient antiquities arranges their collection to conform to a classification system. Classifying relics helps us to understand the process of their manufacture, their purpose to the ...
Cognitive archaeology is recognised as a sub-discipline of archaeology which is itself a sub-discipline of anthropology. The word ‘cognitive’ is derived from the Latin ‘cognoscere’, meaning 'to ...
In archaeology when experts speak about the use of computers in their work, they are not meaning taking a laptop to the excavation site and typing in digging data. It is true that some ...
On a terrestrial site, analysis of the artefacts may take up to eighteen months, while the excavation of them may only have taken as little as a few weeks. Similarly, in underwater archaeology, the ...
When museums and collectors purchase archaeological items for their collections they enter an expensive and potentially deceptive commercial fine arts arena. Healthy profits are to be made from ...
In archaeology the word decipherment is used in reference to the translating of ancient writing into modern texts. One of the unusual realities of archaeological decipherment is that both geniuses ...
What are Defixiones?
The word defixiones, as used by archaeologists, is from the ancient Roman term tabulae defixiones which translated means curse tablets. Ancient defixiones were used to ...
Egypt's best-known archaeological sites are the Pyramids and Tutankhamun's Tomb and for 5000 years the Egyptians have cultivated a rich civilization along the Nile River. One sub-branch of ...
The method of ethnoarchaeological interpretation was developed by archaeologists to counteract the growing abuses found in the ethnographic analogy method.
To help understand the genesis of ...
Gender archaeology is a sub-discipline investigative method of studying ancient societies through close examination of the roles played by men and women as exhibited in the archaeological record of ...
An aerial perspective produces immediate visual information that is not discernable from the ground. Even the most well trained eye of a specialist surveyor can miss outstanding features if the ...
Human osteology is a detailed, scientific study of the composite structure of human bones, exploring the basic skeletal frame, analysis of teeth, diagnosis of disease, and in particular the ...
The phrase is so new to archaeological science that there remains no fixed definition acceptable to all of the sub-disciplines. For 50 years those who claim to be industrial archaeologists have ...
Isotope analysis is the examination and identification of isotopic signatures or the distribution of stable isotopes within chemical compounds. In archaeology it is useful when applied to the food ...
The concept of landscape archaeology is frequently used by archaeologists to describe an activity that is engaged by humans with their surrounding environment. For example: Subsistence or rituals ...
Mesoamerica is archaeologically defined as the geographical area of central and southern Mexico and other parts of Central America such as Guatemala, where numerous ancient states emerged after long ...
Palynology is an independent science that studies palynomorphs such as pollen acritarchs, spores, dinoflagellate cysts, scolecodonts and chitinozoans, along with POM (Particulate Organic Matter) and ...
The most important archaeological dating method is radiocarbon dating. It is a technique that can yield absolute dates with accuracy up to approximately 5000 years before present. However its ...
Rock Art is a general term for all forms of humanly fashioned marks on lithic surfaces. The term is a general category that includes at least two distinctive types of art known as petroglyphs and ...
To many people the word Aztec conjures up images of plentiful gleaming gold and Mesoamerican Indians in rich costumes performing ritualistic dances. Although this is the common depiction in books and ...
The study of the chronological history of life on earth as observed in the fossil record is the science called palaeontology. Simply put, the palaeontologist is a fossil hunter. However, the ...
From the wax notepad of the schoolboy to the grand inscriptions on monuments, almost everything we know about antiquity is derived from writings such as those written on animals, vegetables and ...
The development of writing materials is as fascinating as it is exhaustive. Millions of pieces of ancient communication have helped to record the past and it is certain that millions more will be ...
Civilizations have always exploited the vastness of the ocean for transport and trade. Shipping transportation has been the strength and power of great empires. Ancient civilizations pushed nautical ...
Urban Archaeology is the particular sub-discipline of conventional archaeology, which specialises in the study of the material remains of cities towns and substantial sized other settlements, where ...
The bones and teeth of animals are frequently collected in substantial quantities on archaeology excavation sites. In studying these animal bones it is important in osteology to apply contextual ...
Experimental archaeology is one of the very practical methods of archaeological interpretation. It is a living analytical process used to re-create aspects in part or in whole, of ancient societies ...
