Archaeology Actually

An interesting article was brought to my attention today by the Australian Archaeological Association's twitter account (@AustArchaeology). A couple of posts ago I talked about the potential value of oral histories to archaeologists. In the south Pacific there are no written records of history predating European exploration of the region within the last 400 years. However, throughout this region there are oral traditions that predate European contact and that certainly have the potential to inform archaeological investigations.  The piece I was reading today is an intriguing example from Australia, a land with a human presence dating back around 50,000 years. Australian Aboriginal man with Uluru/Ayers Rock in the background. Image sourced from  here . Stories told by groups of indigenous Australians right around the coast of the continent since the earliest colonial times have recalled rises in sea-level and coastal inundation. The following (in italics) is a direct quo...

Within archaeology, prehistory has a fairly straightforward meaning: prior to recorded (i.e. written down) history. In theory, the use of this term within the field to describe a time period in the past is free of value judgments. The key distinction between prehistoric and historical archaeology is one of differences in the resources that are available to archaeologists when trying to piece together peoples' behaviour in the past. In both cases, we are interested in the material remains of that behaviour. That is, in a nutshell, the definition of archaeology: the investigation of the human past by the study of the material remains left behind. British archaeologist Stuart Piggott once called archaeology 'the science of rubbish' because it predominantly involves the study of things that people have thrown away. Historical Archaeology In historical archaeology the study of material remains is complemented by the study of historical records - whether they be written histo...