Anthropology

Introduction Looters - an individual who plunders archeological sites to find artifacts of commercial value, at the same time destroying the evidence that archeologists rely on to understand the past. Looting takes place where there is a market for illegal antiquities Archeologists - A professional scholar who studies human past thru its physical remains. Archeologists and Archaeology Archeologist’s interests are defined by asking questions of our origins as humans, and of specific cultures, the way society has developed over time, and the relationship b/w the past and the present.
They want to define who we are and understand why behave the way we do. The Lure of Archaeology Archeology is romanticized in bks, movies, and TV
Which is reinforced by the news when such things happen Discoveries are VERY rare Misuses of Archaeology Pseudoarcheology - use of real or imagined archeological evidence to justify nonscientific accounts of the past.
Examples are the lost civilizations of Atlantis and Mu
Money is usually the motive behind pseudoscience Archaeology Defined Archeology-the study of human past thru physical remains, w/the aim of ordering and describing the events of the past and explaining their meaning
A field that uses recovered remains physical remains to order and describe ancient remains, explain human behavior in those events, and understand the meaning of the past. Archeological Record - the physical remains produced by past human activities, which are sought , recovered, studied, and interpreted by archeologist to reconstruct the past. Archeology has 4 principal goals in studying the past Form
Description and classification of physical evidence Goal = to outline the distribution of remains of ancient societies in both time and space Function Purpose of the obj.s found Goal = reconstruct past human activities Process Changes that occurred in past societies Goal = determine how and why ancient societies