Archaeological science

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Archaeological science (also known as archaeometry) consists of the application of scientific techniques and methodologies to archaeology.

One can divide archaeological science into the following areas:^[1]

• physical and chemical dating methods which provide archaeologists with absolute and relative chronologies
• artefact studies incorporating:
  1. provenance
  2. technology
  3. use
• environmental approaches which provide information on past landscapes, climates, flora, and fauna; as well as the diet, nutrition, health, and pathology of people
• mathematical methods for data treatment (also encompassing the role of computers in handling, analysing, and modeling the vast sources of data)
• remote-sensing and geophysical-survey applications comprising a battery of non-destructive techniques for the location and characterisation of buried features at the regional, microregional, and intra-site levels
• conservation sciences, involving the study of decay processes and the development of new methods of conservation^[2]

Techniques such as lithic analysis, archaeometallurgy, paleoethnobotany, palynology and zooarchaeology also form sub-disciplines of archaeological science.

Archaeologists can obtain significant additional data and information using these techniques, and archeometry has the potential to alter the understanding of the past. The so-called "Second radiocarbon revolution" provides a good example of such alteration: it significantly re-dated European prehistory in the 1960s (the first radiocarbon revolution involved the original introduction of the method to archaeology from 1949).

As indicated, one of the most important applications of archaeological science come with the absolute dates it can provide for archaeological strata and artefacts. Some of most important of these include:

• radiocarbon dating — for dating organic materials
• dendrochronology — for dating trees; also very important for calibrating radiocarbon dates
• thermoluminescence dating — for dating inorganic material (including ceramics)
• optically stimulated luminescence (OSL)/optical dating — for absolutely dating and relatively profiling buried land surfaces in vertical and horizontal stratigraphic sections, most often by measuring photons discharged from grains of quartz within sedimentary bodies (although this technique can also measure feldspars, complications caused by internally-induced dose-rates often favour the use of quartz-based analyses in archaeological applications)
• electron spin resonance
• potassium-argon dating — for dating (for example) fossilized hominid remains

However, archaeologists have applied archaeological science in many other ways as well. They have used a variety of methods to analyse artefacts, either to determine more about their composition, or to determine their provenance. These techniques include:

• X-ray fluorescence (XRF)
• inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)
• neutron activation analysis (NAA)
• scanning electron microscopy (SEM)
• laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS)

Lead, strontium and oxygen isotope analysis can also test human remains to estimate the diets and even the birthplaces of a study's subjects.

Provenance analysis has the potential to determine the original source of the materials used, for example, to make a particular artefact. This can show how far the artefact has travelled and can indicate the existence of systems of exchange.

The use of remote sensing has enabled archaeologists to identify many more archaeological sites than they could have otherwise. The use of aerial photography remains the most wide-spread remote-sensing technique, but archaeologists have supplemented it with the use of satellite imagery, especially with the declassification of images from military satellites. Ground-based geophysical surveys often help to identify and map archaeological features within identified sites.

[edit] See also

• post-excavation analysis
• dating methodology (archaeology)

[edit] References