Roles Of Archaeology

Archaeology is not just ‘digging’, although the excavation of artefacts is important, there are many more aspects involved that are all as significant. Archaeology can best be described as the study of extinct human cultures (Woodbury, 2008). There are 3 different fields of archaeologist, these being Field archaeologist, university archaeologist and museum archaeologist. A field archaeologist main point of concentration is on the excavation of sites and documenting records of their work. A museum archaeologist job is to preserve places and objects that field archaeologist discover whilst presenting them to the public. The final type of archaeologist are university archaeologist who both teach and train students in the study of archaeology ( …show more content…
Archaeology began in 15th and 16th century Europe mostly because people thought of artefacts as works of art. This can be seen throughout the renaissance where artefacts were collected from ancient Greece and Rome to be put on display. This large desire for antiquites soon led to sponsored excavations and from there grew classical archaeology (Dowdey, 2008). As the years went past archaeology became more of a learning experience about our past rather than just a collectors hobby. The role of archaeologist in today 's society is important as with the knowledge of past societies and knowing what they did wrong we as a society today can move forward and correct the mistakes that our past ancestors have made. Archaeologist show us evidence of past civilizations and help to feed our desire to gain knowledge about them(Lowenthal, 2016). As the study of archaeology expanded so did the reasoning behind why people became archaeologist. Nowadays you will find that a large number of archaeologist are motivated by the desire of wanting to understand more about the history of mankind but there are still a small minority that are only interested in the study as for their own selfish