What is archaeology?
In this session we begin by explaining what archaeology is. What do we mean when we use the term? Are we talking simply about bits of broken pottery and obscure piles of stones? In fact, archaeology is about people who lived and died in the past. In order to learn about them, archaeologists ask questions like:
- Who were these people? When did they live? What were they and their families like?
- Where did they live, and in what kind of environment?
- What did they eat?
- What tools and equipment did they use?
- What contact did they have with other people?
- How did they organise themselves and their society?
- And perhaps most of all, what did they think and feel?
 (Click to enlarge) © Collins |
Archaeologists try to answer questions like these, using different types of evidence - environmental, material, documentary, and even oral - and applying approaches from several disciplines - anthropology, geography, history, and science. But the focus of our work is always the people who made and used the evidence that we archaeologists find and analyse.
In this course, we focus on the archaeology of Crete, and in so doing we will introduce you to a number of the basic issues in archaeology.
