Examine Ancient Artifacts

According to Spradlin, “Culture is defined in various ways. This concept may be broadly described as encompassing a group’s common beliefs, including shared traditions, language, styles, values, and agreement about norms for living. Culture, however always intersects individuals’ race, social class, gender, age, ability status, sexual orientation, and family traditions (Laird, 2000)” (pg.5). No matter how much we want to escape culture in certain scenarios, it will always show up. How we see the world effects everything around us.

After rewatching Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Ark for the second time I view Indiana Jones as less of an archaeologist than I did the first time I watched it. In my first paper I stated that Indiana Jones was a combination of a grave digger and an archaeologist. Now after completing this course I see that he is even less of an archaeologist than I first depicted. The only ethical archaeology being conducted in this movie is done by the Nazi’s; not Indiana Jones. Beyond, getting historical accuracy of the time period correct this movie fails fails to paint a picture of what archaeology truly is. In turn, since my knowledge is far more comprehensive I have come to realize that the movie fails to showcase archaeology even more than I originally

Human beings, desire to maintain a connection with the past is achieved through the languages spoken, the various cultures practiced, and sadly through acquiring of cultural property by the means of grave robbing. Native Americans wanted justice for these past mistreatments and control over their history. According to Chip Colwell, campaigning, repatriation of indigenous artifacts began in the 1960s by indigenous activism. Finally, on November 16, 1990, The United States Government passed The Native American Graves Protection and Reparation Act. NAGPRA summarizes that museums must conduct an inventory of all native American cultural artifacts and remains. (Native) In addition, Museums send the inventories to federally recognized tribes, in

-Archaeologists reconstructed the environment and studied artifacts from a specific time period to learn about people from that time.

Archaeology is the most common way to learn about the existence of humans. Many cultures have left written records behind providing information about life for them. The records left behind often tells about wealth, religion, hierarchy, important dates, property ownership and etc. Those records are often written from one person prospective and may not be all true. Understanding the life of past cultures that have no written records is what make archeology important. Archeology gives a voice to the voiceless with the hope of discovering their story.

The following report details the archaeological fieldwork conducted by New South Associates, Inc. for proposed widening and improvements along U.S. 158 in Forsyth and Guilford counties, North Carolina. The purpose of the survey was to identify and evaluate archaeological sites for the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), within the proposed project area of potential effects (APE). This project was conducted for the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) (TIP R-2577ABC, State Project No. 37405). This is a state-funded project covered under a United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) individual permit. As such, the USACE serves as the lead federal agency and the work complies with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), as amended.

This research uncovers the written records associated with the area of interest. In addition to primary historical documents, archaeologists will look for site reports that have been prepared by other archaeologists who have studied the area. These reports will often describe what was found in the area during any previous archaeological investigations and will help guide the archeologists to new discoveries. The archives today are stored on huge computer systems and can be recovered at anytime thanks to easy navigation instead of having to look through thousands maybe even hundreds of thousands of documents to find what your looking

In 2007, the United Nations made the document entitled the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It was made with the help and fought for by Indigenous peoples. That essentially ensures the protection of their rights. Mistreatment of source materials and disrespecting of cultures and even outright theft. The Field Museums “Ancient Americas” incorporated indigenous people’s point of view of the areas on display at the museum. The field museum but on an exhibit without negatively impacting or in any way violating indigenous people’s rights.

In the film the archaeologists seem to just be running rampant. Everything is very fast paced and thrilling; they are constantly involved in chases and fights through the local towns. In reality this is rare if not non-existent. Archaeologists are not only tasked with uncovering the past but additionally must tread carefully around locals. They should disturb the community as little as possible and often have positive interactions with them. A good example of this is how Dr. Morag helped to educate children in the middle east about the consequences of looting ancient

Archaeologists learn about people who lived long ago by looking at things people have left behind and those things are buried. So, people can built new homes and towns over those things. They find those things by excavating. They’re careful because they don’t want to break anything so, they’d use special tools to “find things like clothing, bones, and pottery.” They also find parts of a building. They can find out how these things are and tell how ancient people used to live and also might figure out different things that were used. The archaeologist want to study the 5,000-year-old door because they want to know how things worked or looked back then or when they were created or where they’re from. Also, according to Helmut Schlichtherle, a

Artifacts can come in all different shapes and sizes. In the case of the artifacts present in the Cobb Museum, it is clear that the smaller artifacts tend to be on the New World side while the larger objects tend to be on the Old World side. New World artifacts tend to be relatively small in size. The largest objects were pottery objects, and those themselves were not more than a foot tall. The smallest objects were arrow heads, some a mere inch tall and some several inches tall. In contrary, the artifacts of the Old World tended to be quite larger in size. Artifacts such as the Moabite Stone, sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, King Amenehotep II statue, the Roseta Stone, and the Code of Hammurabi were all enormous artifact, ranging from about three feet to over eight feet tall.

According to an article on archaeology, ¨There are no written records for 99% of human history [;] this is one of the reasons why archaeology is so important¨ (¨Science Careers: Archaeology¨). Studying the history of mankind is important so that people can understand where they came from and where they are going to. In order to become an archeologist, an individual needs to learn what skills are necessary, what education requirements there are, and what salary they can look forward to upon completion, so that goals can be met in this area.

Metal artefacts have always played the key role in discussions of the Bronze Age as an international capital market. In early archaeology, much focus was placed on artefacts in terms of typology and cross-dating in order to estimate their period of affiliation. It was the study of their fragmentation that led early scholars to divide depositions into ritual sacrifices and rational-economic scrap findings. In recent archaeology, instead, focus has been placed on their landscape context, relating different categories of objects to certain settings and assumed practices in the landscape. Although the importance of emphasizing regional variations is often stressed, similar patterns of deposition practices are nonetheless often stressed.

When looking for an artifact I first asked my grandfather. When I asked him I found out a lot about my family history like how my great grandfather was in the Olympics which lead to the fact that when around 1953 the trend was to collect pins and place them on a hat. The artifact I found was pins from a collection of different sports events in the Olympics that mark wins and teams competing in the olympics. Looking and researching these pins I have noticed how valuable they can be. Some history behind these pins is how they all represent some countries and the times they were in the

In the Archaeological Theory in Practice textbook, the positive legacies of Culture History are detailed by V. Gordon Childe’s archaeological theory processes. It emphasized that cultural History subdivided historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groups by their physical culture, rejecting a comparative method and independent cultural development, with documentation reflecting the development of specific groups have distinctive set of traits unique to each cultural group. It explained change was caused by diffusion and migration in which research with spatial and temporal time and space systematics to shape cultural forms over time that determine human behavior. Each culture has importance in origins and is a unique