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Museum Of Archaeology Essay

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Introduction
Good Morning everyone, today I will be taking you on a tour through the Museum of Archaeology. On today's excursion you will acquire the knowledge of what archaeology is, what archaeologist do, learn about one of the most outstanding archaeologist from the past 200 years, get to observe 2 artefacts from the Pandora and discover how they teach us about the everyday life of an 18th century soldier.

Definition
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 …show more content…

The Pandora wreck is considered to be a significant historical event as of it link to the mutiny on the Bounty(Queensland Museum,20??). The wreck itself was great archaeological find has nearly 30% of original hull was kept preserved along with many artefacts. This is due to what archaeologist refer to as the Pompeii effect which means that all artefacts were remained unremoved from their original state(Queensland Museum,20??). This is because once the ship sunk instead of completely breaking apart on the seafloor the vessel held together and a layer of sand soon covered it shielding it from the sun protecting all of the artefacts inside (Museum of Tropical Queensland, 2016: Field Notes). Artefacts are best described as tangible items created by humans, just behind me you will notice two artefacts found in the Pandora wreck edge, a spruce pot and a french pistol. Both of these artefacts can reveal tons of information on what life was like for an 18th century english soldier. Let’s start with the spruce pots, spruce pots were small round bottles that contained medicine for when crew members caught scurvy, in fact 200 of these spruce pots have been found. Scurvy is a very common disease for sailors and was caused a by a deficiency in vitamin C (Museum of Tropical Queensland, 2016: Field Notes). This artefact shows us how undernourished the soldiers and how this led them to contract scurvy. During the long journeys the food would run out so Captain Edwards tried his best to keep the ship loaded with fresh food to prevent any of the crew from getting sick. The second artefact is the Flintlock Pistol and butt cap or more commonly know just as a French pistol. Although the Pandora was never attacked all members were expected to know how to fire a gun (Museum of Tropical Queensland, 2016: Field Notes). This can

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