The Science of Discovering the Past: Archaeology
There are many ways that we can learn about what happened in the past. Some of those ways are ancient, studying the graves of those who went before as the Ancient Egyptians of the New Kingdom did with their Old Kingdom. Some of those are newer, such as genetic studies. It can focus on architecture, artifacts, experimentation, documents, or any of a number of specialties.
Archaeology is the overarching study of human activity by recovering artifacts, known as 'material culture' or the 'archaeological record'. Archaeologists study everything from the stone tools made 3.3 million years ago to things that happened a few decades ago.
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The first archaeological studies were conducted by Khaenweset, who lived from about 1281-1225 BCE, the son of Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II. He studied Djoser's step pyramid, which predated him by 1400 years. This fascination led to him being called 'the first Egyptologist'. King Nabonidus, who ruled over the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 556-539 BCE discovered remains from the rule of Naram-Sin, who was an Akkadian emperor from about 2255-2218 BCE, earning him the nickname 'the first archaeologist'. The first historian is a title given to the Greek historian Herodotus, who lived from about 484-425 BCE, and made a systemic study of artifacts and stories from regions around the Mediterranean, including discussing the human causes of the Greco-Persian Wars.
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In more modern times, those first efforts became antiquarians, those who studied ancient artifacts and texts as well as the sites they came from. This was usually conducted by the rich, who displayed those artifacts in curio cabinets. The goal of antiquarians was to 'speak from fact not theory', taking steps to the systemic study of the past and toward archaeology. Some of the first antiquarians were among the Song dynasty of China (from 960-1279 CE) where the educated gentry class began collecting ancient art as well as studying the documents of the past, those from the Shang, Zhou, and Han dynasties, from the 2nd-1st millennium BCE. In India, Kalhana wrote a history of Kashmir called Rajatarangini (The River of Kings), one of the first histories of India. The fascination with Greco-Roman civilization began in the Late Middle Ages in Europe with the rediscovery of works by Livy beginning in Italy and spreading through the rest of Europe.
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One of the first sites to be systemically excavated was Stonehenge in England in the early 17th century. The first people to study the site were William Harvey and Gilbert North followed by Inigo Jones and the Duke of Buckingham. Following studies of megalithic sites was the study of Roman towns and hillforts. In Italy, Pompeii and Herculaneum was studied beginning in 1748 under the rule of Charles VII of Naples. In 1784, Thomas Jefferson began the excavation of Native American burial mounds in Virginia. Napoleon undertook his Egyptian campaign in 1798-1801, taking with him 500 civilian scientists with him to study Ancient Egyptian remains, including Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the Rosetta Stone, allowing modern people to understand hieroglyphics.
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These early studies were haphazard, however. It wasn't until William Cunnington, who lived from 1754-1810, that excavations became more systemic. He worked with a specific group excavators and was funded by multiple patrons, the richest, Richard Colt Hoare, began backing him in 1804. He studied neolithic and Bronze Age and some of the terms that he developed are still in use. He is also the first to record the use of a trowel. During the 19th century, stratigraphy, the study of rock layers, was developed. During this time frame, the concept of 'deep time' was also developed, the idea that time extends billions of years in the past rather than to just 23 October 4004 BCE as calculated by James Usher, a theologian who lived from 1581-1656.
