The study of warfare in prehistory is a specialty of its own embedded within the anthropology of war. To study prehistoric warfare requires knowledge of the conceptual and theoretical ideas set forth in the entries for “Feuding” and “War, Anthropology of,” as well as an awareness of how to apply this knowledge to the archeological
With a varied and lengthy pedigree, environmental archaeology has grown in importance in recent decades. What was once seen just as a loose collection of techniques devoted to sampling past environments has developed into an important theoretical and methodological research perspective. Quite simply, environmental archaeology is the study of past human economic, political, and ritual
Maritime archaeology is a subdiscipline of archaeology dedicated to examining prehistoric and historic sites related to aquatic environments. This can include shipwreck sites in an ocean, coastal ports, underwater archaeological remains, or any submerged land structures. The terms used to describe this field of study usually refer to the location of the sites, although shipwrecks
Defining Medieval Archaeology The European Middle Ages or Medieval period begins with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE and ends with the European voyages of discovery in the 15th century CE. The millennium-long era starts with the Migration period (ca. 400600 CE), sometimes known as the “Dark Ages” due
Salvage (or compliance) archaeology is performed in response to local, state, and federal historic preservation mandates. Compliance archaeology ensures that cultural resources that are likely to be impacted by construction are properly managed through documentation and excavation before they are destroyed. Over half of the archaeologists working in the United States today are employed in
Archaeology Definition Archaeology is the study of human cultures through the study of material and environmental remains. The word, derived from ancient Greek, means “the study of antiquity.” Archaeology is one of the four subfields of anthropology, together with biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and social/cultural anthropology. Archaeological remains can take many forms, two of the
Deconstructing Gender and Sex Issues of gender presence and interrelations for the past have increasingly been focused upon in the last two decades in the English-speaking archaeological community. Conkey and Spector are widely credited with the first paper to systematically examine the application of feminist approaches and insights to archaeological practice and theory. Studies were
Biblical or Near Eastern archaeology reconstructs the histories and societies of the Near East from human ancestors’ first migrations out of Africa 1.5 million years ago to the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 CE through archaeological evidence and historical documents. Geography and Climate Although the archaic geographic term Near East has been largely