Brian M. Fagan - A Brief History of Archaeology: Classical Times to the Twenty-First Century

Lost civilizations, richly adorned royal burials, overgrown cities emerging miraculously from clinging rain forest: Archaeology has a long and romantic history of spectacular discovery. But there is much more to archaeologys history than the finding of palaces and ancient states. We would go so far as to say that you cannot understand todays archaeology without a thorough knowledge of its beginnings, and of the ideas that nurtured it.

Archaeologys achievements have been remarkable. Over the past century and a half, archaeologists have pushed back the story of human origins to a time more than 3 million years ago. They have traced the origins of modern humansourselvesto tropical Africa more than 150,000 years ago; chronicled the beginnings of agriculture; and reconstructed the minutest details of ancient life. The same 150 years have seen archaeology turn from an amateur pursuit into a sophisticated, multidisciplinary science in the hands of thousands of professional specialists. This history has unfolded against a background of changing intellectual and social environments: From the philosophical speculations of classical writers, and versions of human origins based on the Old Testament, to elaborate theories of multilinear evolution, cultural ecology, and the so-called postprocessual archaeology of the 1990s. This book is a brief introduction to the diverse strands of the history of archaeology, both intellectual and nonintellectual. Its a history that melds stories of compelling personalities and eminent archaeologists with accounts of spectacular and not-so-spectacular discoveries, and with ideas about the interpretation of our past.

A Brief History of Archaeology is a journey through the intriguing highways and byways of a discipline that has been a science for less than a century. Books like this are hard to write, because they combine people, discoveries, and ideas in ways that can easily become a confusing mlange of information. For this reason, we have chosen to write this book as a simple narrative, passing from archaeologists and their discoveries to changing ideas about the past in as seamless a way as possible.

ends with the work of Flinders Petrie along the Nile and that of Arthur Evans on the Palace of Knossos on Crete after 1900. Their researches ushered in a new era, which saw a new emphasis on artifacts, dating, and science.

, with the development of radiocarbon dating and increasingly pointed critiques of culture history. We also trace the beginnings of multidisciplinary research, and of salvage archaeology, and the development of world prehistory as a viable intellectual concept in the late 1950s.

takes a look at the developing archaeology of the future.

Guides to Further Reading at the end of each chapter provide sources for additional research. A Glossary of Archaeological Sites and Cultural Terms at the end of the book gives additional information on the more important sites mentioned in the text.

This book is not a history of archaeological theory, nor is it a history of archaeology by personality or discovery. Its an attempt to provide a balanced, and, we hope, entertaining account of the history of a relative newcomer to the world of science. As these pages will testify, the discovery of the prehistory of humankind ranks among the greatest scientific achievements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The perspective is international, for we believe that archaeology is a global enterprise, not just a narrowly focused view of the past based on, say, North America, Europe, or the eastern Mediterranean.