What is archaeology?
What does it have to do with Mount Rainier? Archaeology is a science dedicated to improving our understanding of our collective human past through study of physical remains left behind. Artifacts are perhaps the best known unit of study. These include all portable objects (from stone tools to forks) that have been made, modified or used by human beings. Features are objects, such as cooking hearths, rock walls, or storage pits, that cannot be removed without destroying their basic integrity. Clustered concentrations of artifacts and features on the landscape typically are defined as archaeological sites. The patterned configuration of sites with their associated features and artifacts provides a valuable archaeological record of long-term human use of a place –a record no less important at Mount Rainier than at parks, such as Mesa Verde in Colorado or Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, better known for their spectacular archaeological remains. Although artifacts and features may be studied an
Archaeology is the excavation and study of the material remains left by past communities. Material remains include the physical things people made or used, everything from clothes to buildings. Archaeology can be divided into many specialized subfields, often dealing with a particular time period, culture, geographical area, or category of materials. Please refer to the section under Introduction to Archaeology for a more detailed discussion.
The Bliss Bone Bed Site Archaeology is the scientific study of peoples of the past… their culture and their relationship with their environment. The purpose of archaeology is to understand how humans in the past interacted with their environment, and to preserve this history for present and future learning. What archaeology isn’t. Sometimes people get confused about what archaeology studies.
Archaeology is a branch of the social science anthropology. Anthropology is the study of humans and their culture. Culture is the way of life of a group of people. One branch of anthropology is cultural anthropology, which deals directly with living human groups and all aspects of each group’s culture: their religion, law, economics, kinship, etc. Physical, or biological anthropology, is another branch of anthropology, and this branch deals with the biological aspects of human life, past and present. Linguistic anthropology is a final branch, and it examines the origins and evolution of language. As far as archaeology is concerned, it is the study of the human past. It accomplishes this study by examining material remains of past human activity. These materials includes everything from a tomb of a queen to a broken piece of pottery or burned animal bones – all of these things are informative about past human culture and are pieces in the puzzle. Archaeology includes the discovery, reco
