ARCHAEOLOGY REMAINS



According to Fagan (2009:4), the term archaeology has been defined as “the scientific study of the human past of ancient human behavior from the earliest time right up to the present.”[1]
According to oxford advanced learners dictionary (2010:39) archaeology has been defined as “the study of the past based on objects or parts of buildings that are found in the ground”[2]
Generally archaeology is the study of human culture through cultural remains and other cultural phenomena.
The past human remains include the following.
Artifacts. These are objects found in archaeological sites that exhibits features resulting from human activities these include portable archaeological finds from stone, axes to gold ornaments .others examples are iron tools.
Ecofacts, These are materials made and used or modified by man but which are organic. These include bones and plants remain.
Structure, These are construction remains which were made used by man, they have to be constructed such as houses, tombs.
Features, These are human’s cultural signature which are not removable and which are not artifact, ecofacts and structure. Such as old areas and Ditch .these mentioned are human past remains which can be used to study archaeology, because they can give information of the pat human culture.
After seeing meanings of archaeology and things which made it, we can now discuss the Goals of archaeology. Among of goals of archaeology goals are followings.
Archaeology explains the past ways of life of the people. In explaining past ways of life archaeology tend to give information on how did people lived in the past and their socio-economic activities. “The word life ways of people cover many activities everything from hunting and plant gathering to agriculture, interaction between individual and groups, social organization and religion beliefs”[3]For example in  “explaining subsistence ,means how did people make their living or acquire food is studied by using fragmentary animal bones , seeds and other surviving evidence ancient human diet and substance”[4]. “Evidence of the presence of stone axes or iron hoe may give an indication of hunting or agriculture”[5]
“Social organization and religion beliefs .These are intangible life ways of the past of the people, we can never hope to capture the events of these, However artifacts, Arts style, even temples and cities a mirror of the intangible of these life ways of the past.”[6].
Archaeology explains culture and social changes. This tends to give information on cultural changes and social changes of people in the past. In explaining cultural and social changes of the people archaeology tends to answer question what? Why and how? Example “what caused Maya civilization in southern memo American low land with huge cities and powerful lords to collapse in AD 900? Why did people living over a huge area of southern Asia change over the agriculture before 10000?”[7] “The ultimate goals of these pre-history archaeologists are to explain why human culture in all parts of the world reached their various stage of cultural evolution”[8]. The source of culture and social changes can be due to invention, good or bad environment, diffusion and migration.
Archaeology explains cultural history. In explaining culture history archaeology tend to explain that culture was changing from one stage to another. “Culture history is an approach to archaeology that assumes that artifacts can be used to build up and generalized pictures of human in time and space”. “Culture history is reconstructed by building up local sequence of archaeological sites into regional and even larger frame work of changing human culture” “archaeologists base on the assumption that artifacts such as potsherds, display stylistic and other changes that represent  the changing norms of human behavior through time.
Another goal of archaeology is to establish chronology. In establishing chronology archaeologists used different scientific methods to get specific time which the events took place in the past. “Among of the scientific method is obsidian hydration, every archaeologist dreams of a dating method that gives accurate age for durable artifacts like stone tools and potsherds. Obsidian hydration has potential for this purpose obsidian is natural glass formed by volcanic activity often used by ancients for sharp-edge tools, mirror and ornaments. The thickness of hydration layer can be to develop absolute and relative chronology for stone tools”[9].
Another goal of archaeology is to preserve archaeological records. “The most and fundamental objective of all is to conserve, manage and preserve the archaeological records of the past for future generation. Archaeological sites are precious finite resources and they are vanishing at breathtaking speed. Already most archaeological fieldwork around the world is devoted to salvage work and general management of the surviving archives of the past.”[10]
                                   REFERRENCES.


Fagan, B.M. (2009), Archaeology; A brief Introduction; United States of America, Prentice Hall,
 Fagan, B, M. (1988).In the beginning; An introduction to Archaeology.Canada.Little, Brown
                   





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why some areas in Africa experienced more intensive scramble than others?

Image
The scramble for colonies in Africa was the intense competition or struggle for the control of African territories, which took place among the European capitalist nations in the 1880s and 1890s. Before the 1880s   European countries were not much interested to establish colonialism in African continent, while they had only trade relationship with Africans and to spread Christianity religion. Also before the 19 th century European had no idea if African continent had other things to offer rather than forestry materials and slaves. During the scramble for and partition of Africa some areas experienced more scramble than others; this was due to the following factors: 1. Some areas were potential for agriculture; the objective of controlling African continent was for the exploitation of agriculture raw materials. European countries occupied areas with soil fertility and enough rainfall. Example of areas which were potential for agricultural raw materials includes Niger b...
Read more

Relationship between history and Archaeology.

Image
History is defined as the study of past human events. This definition is however very limited for it is not all past human events that constitute history, human activities are multiple and take place every day that they cannot be all be taken as historical event .History  Therefore is the study of the selected past human events. The selection of study of historical events depends on the historians himself, his own background, the political and socio economic environment in which he lives, the message he wants to communicate to his consumers and the lesson he wants them to learn  Tarimo (2004). Therefore we can define history as an interaction between the historian and his fact and an interaction between the past, present, and the future. For a long time until 20 th century written sources had been regarded as the only sources of history, absence of such sources in sub-Saharan Africa leads to the conclusion by the colonial historian that black Africans had no his...
Read more

1:0 INTERACTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA. HISTORY FORM TWO TOPIC ONE.

Image
TOPIC ONE INTERACTIONS AMONG THE PEOPLE OF AFRICA: What is interaction? Interaction refers to the way in which people from one society came into contact with another society. Through these contacts African people were able to form new relationship during pre-colonial period. I. SOCIAL FACTORS FOR INTERACTION; The following are the social factors which gave rise to interactions among the people of Africa; 1. Through marriage; interactions influenced by marriages where by one community marry from another community. Example some African rulers married from different clans in order to strengthen their political power, example kabaka married from different clans for the aims of strengthen his power. Also marriage between African people and Arabs cause interaction. Hence cause interaction. 2. Due to migration; this is another factor for interaction among the African societies in order to avoid areas with diseases like cholera, malaria as well as sleeping sickness . Th...
Read more