How Modern Technology is Helping Archaeologists Learn About Ancient Cultures
- by Michelle C. Langley
- based on two articles from Australian Archaeology 75
“Archaeology has a long history. People have always speculated about the past and most cultures have origin stories about how they came to exist and why. However, archaeology—the undertaking of excavation and careful examination of artefacts to learn about the past—only began in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when especially curious and adventurous researchers began to dig at some of the most famous ancient sites (such as Pompeii, Stonehenge and Troy). These early digs were far from the careful and scientific excavations that are undertaken today. Early researchers were primarily concerned with finding ‘exciting’ artefacts, burials, or buildings and didn’t consider the remaining (often broken or ‘boring’) ones, or even the context (where and how an artefact is found) in which they were found, worthy of study.
Now, archaeologists know that the context in which artefacts are found provides the most important information for learning about past peoples. Consequently, modern excavations take great care to record every aspect of the site being investigated. This careful recording is essential as excavation is a destructive process—artefacts are removed from their original location and their relationship with other artefacts and the site itself will be lost if not carefully recorded.
Similarly, determining how old an artefact is or what it is made from often requires that small pieces of the object are removed for analysis in various laboratory-based machines. These samples are often destroyed or altered during analysis. Thus, archaeologists are constantly looking to develop or integrate new technologies which minimise the impact (the damage) on the artefacts and sites which we study.
In the last decade, a multitude of new technologies have become available to researchers allowing them to undertake more sophisticated analyses in the field and minimise the impact on the archaeology. These technologies include iPads, digital surveying equipment which records each individual artefact in three-dimensional (3-D) space, portable microscopes, digital scanners which can photograph entire sites in 3D, and portable spectrographic units” (read more).
(Source: Australian Archaeological Association)