What is archaeology?

Seems an easy enough question, and one I should probably know the answer to by now. Most people would say that archaeology is the study of old things.

Like dinosaurs?

Sadly not dinosaurs. As much as I love dinosaurs, and believe all of the factual accuracies in Jurassic Park (ahem), I don’t study them. Archaeology is the study of past people and anything associated with them. So unfortunately, since dinosaurs and people have never co-existed, we don’t get to study them.

Whilst you could include an argument over whether this means all human-type ancestors, or only Homo sapiens, I’m more interested in the other end of the spectrum. There are some who study WWII archaeology, but since there are still many people alive today who owned and used that “archaeology”, can we really call it such? Isn’t archaeology older than that?

In my opinion archaeology is linked to two central concepts:

• That the person that it belongs to is dead.
• That the chain of ownership has been broken. 

What I mean by this is either the individual person who owned an object, or the whole society they belonged to, is no longer alive. I also mean that an object passed down from your grandparents (for example) is not, in my opinion, archaeology. It is an heirloom – since there is a direct connection to the original owner. However, if that same object had been lost, and subsequently dug up (we archaeologists like digging things up!), and rediscovered, then it is archaeology.

What I don’t mean is that we cannot have a connection to the archaeology that we study. Many people (academic or otherwise), are interested in the archaeology of a certain region, town, country, precisely because they feel a connection to that place – whether because they were born there, live there now, or their ancestors were from there. Often it is this connection that drives archaeology, and it is certainly part of my motivation for studying British archaeology. The difference is that the people the archaeology belonged to cannot be directly questioned – there is a temporal (and existential) dislocation between “us” and “them”. Memory cannot be inherently trusted, and whilst artefacts can “lie” as well, they are open to questions and reinterpretations.

For me, this disconnection between original ownership and current possession is key. Archaeology is all about understanding the past, just as history is. However, a lot of history is concentrated on written sources (primary, secondary and so on), whereas for much of archaeology, writing didn’t exist (this pre-literacy period is called Prehistory). Whilst the two can join together (much in the way of modern Conflict Archaeology), they are still two separate disciplines. Archaeology is more of a puzzle, an attempt to understand something that isn’t explicitly spelled out for us.

And who doesn’t like puzzles?

Next week, something close to my heart (and my research!): What is a hillfort?

1. Visit this website to read more about Modern Conflict Archaeology