Archaeology

One of the most important parts of archaeology is documentation. If documentation is questionable (or worst nonexistent) then an artifact looses much of its vital information.

Provenience ('in situ') is the three-dimensional location or find spot of an artifact or feature within an archaeological site.[1] while provenance is an object's complete documented history. Provenience is especially crucial as not only does the actual location need to be noted but any evidence of possible changes to the stratigraphy. This is followed up with the actual history of the object from the point of its excavation to the present day.

In addition to provenience, archaeology has other methods of dating objects and events. For the periods prior to recorded history, radiocarbon dating is an option, though certain limitations to this method are apparent.

In actuality, radiocarbon dates signify a range — known as a "standard deviation" — which, at 1σ (1-sigma), only has a 68% chance of being right. On the plus side, radiocarbon dates follow the 68–95–99.7 rule^{File:Wikipedia's W.svg}, so doubling the range to two standard deviations (2σ) has a 95% chance of being right, and tripling the range to three standard deviations (3σ) has a whopping 99.7% chance of being right. Crucially however, nearly all dates must be calibrated, as the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 in the atmosphere has not always been constant — a basic fact of chemistry, also relevant to why scientists know global warming is occuring.

The closer a finding is to the present, the more important this range becomes — thus, any C14 date within the last 3,000 years without its range (a common occurrence) is not overly helpful, and provides us with little in terms of actual precision.

Ultimately, recorded history remains (by necessity) the primary resource by which archaeologists catalogue their findings, resulting in the subprofession of historical anthropology — which tries to form a theory of how the people of a particular time and place saw the world (e.g. via interpretation of their written records).

The culture-history approach essentially formed the basis for modern archaeology. It is defined by the grouping of various site and artefact types into different 'cultures'. While the approach acts as a fairly decent 'rule of thumb', the fact that such artefacts were often traded extensively means that this method of analysis risks oversimplification. The Marxist archaeologist, V. Gordon Childe, is generally associated with this approach. Culture-history has generally been superseded in the west by processual and post-processual archaeology. However, it remains influential in areas comprising the former Soviet Union.

Processual archaeology, sometimes referred to as 'the new archaeology' is generally considered a reductionist methodology. The movement grew out of the United States, and is strongly associated with Lewis Binford and his students. Processualists wished to adopt a more scientific approach to archaeology and the aims of the movement were outlined by Binford in a paper entitled 'Archaeology as anthropology'. Processualism borrows the ideas of hypothesis and the scientific method from the natural sciences.

Post-processual archaeology is the more interpretative approach to archaeological theory. It grew out of post-modernism in the 1980s. Post-processualism criticises the detached approach of processual archaeology, claiming that each individual interprets the past in his or her own way and that an exact scientific approach to archaeology is virtually impossible. Ian Hodder, one of the foremost advocates of the post-processualism is known for encouraging his students and staff to formulate their own interpretations of archaeological finds. Post-processualism is currently the dominant approach in western archaeology, though processualism retains many staunch adherents.

It should be noted that Archaeology is a very fragmented profession with some areas still using theories (such as as Imperial synthesis[2] and historical particularism) which have been abandoned as obsolete in other regions. Another problem is due to social-economic factors the proper methodology is not always being used. For example, the quality of field work around the world ranges from reasonable to effectively bordering on pseudoarchaeology.[3]