Archaeology Analysis

Stephen Dean, a British archaeologist, once said, “archaeology is like a jigsaw puzzle, except that you can’t cheat and look at the box, and not all the pieces are there.” What does it really mean to be a professional archaeologist? According to vocabulary.com, an archaeologist is “a scientist who studies human history by digging up human remains and artifacts.” But archaeology is a lot more than just digging in the dirt and it has become more precise and detailed than ever before. After Dr. Charles Metz’s time, archaeologists have introduced high-technology equipment including, ground penetrating radar and lidar. This is a great advancement since it increases the preciseness and ease of finding archaeological sites. The preciseness is not

He knew that once “the ground was disturbed, it could never be returned to its original state” (112). In consideration of this fact, he would spend a great deal of time surveying the land. With today’s technology, archaeologists can use ground penetrating radar and LIDAR to find archaeological sites without digging into unknown land. Ground penetrating radar sends an electromagnetic signal into the ground and uses the reflections to determine how far they need to dig. It even has the ability to recognize small objects that are profoundly deep and can be used to plot data and map out the land. Lidar stands for “light radar” and is similar to ground penetrating radar except it uses a laser to detect how much depth there is. Additionally, lidar can pass through tree tops, which is advantageous to archaeologists for mapping the land. A modern advancement in the archaeological technology used today, which would have been helpful to Metz, is magnetometry and the use of magnetometers. Magnetometers can detect brick, iron, or even burned soil within the earth by using a sensor that reads the strength of a magnetic field. Along with advanced archaeological technology, scientific methods have also changed and improved since the 19th

Charles Metz studied past human life in the Little Miami River Valley and examined their culture through artifacts. Those are characteristics of an archaeologist, which will not change over time. The technology, methods, and regulations may modify and improve, however, the practice of archaeology will remain the same. The advancements in archaeology over the years make it easier to locate and plot sites, discover lost artifacts, and preserve nonrenewable land. As archaeological technology advances, modern archaeologists are able to reexamine past sites to learn more information. Since the methods have been standardized, they can test and retest past hypotheses to see if they can disprove any old theories about the past culture. Professional archaeologists have always had the same goals, to study past cultures and to learn how people used to live. Just like any profession, as society advances everything else will soon follow in their footsteps. By studying archaeology, archaeologists can understand how past people lived and use that information to investigate how current cultures have