Mechanics of Experimental Archaeology

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Archaeologists are constantly questioning both past circumstances, technologies and capabilities of the past; one of the ways of analyzing and interpreting archaeological data is through the practice of Experimental Archaeology. Experimental Archaeology is a scientific approach to analyzing archaeological data found during excavations. Experimental Archaeologists are grounded in science and work to explain various aspect of the past through physical experimentation being the way of analyzing and interpreting the past. This paper will discuss what Experimental Archaeology is and why it is important to the overall field of archaeology, additionally; it will provide examples of Experimental Archaeology.
Experimental archaeology is based in science, and is driven by scientific discipline and methodology. Instead of focusing on proving or disproving theories its goal is to provide evidence for possible past reconstructions of houses, ways of life, technologies. Experimental archaeology starts with the excavation of an archaeological site and continues onto the interpretation of the archaeological data. The generalized goal of experimental archaeology is to reconstruct past lifestyles and conditions (Reynolds 1994). The experiments that are conducted by Experimental Archaeologists utilize the scientific method, thus if there is an experiment about a particular aspect of the past for example agriculture, the methodology, reasoning and conclusions would make sense to an agricultural scientist. This is what separates Experimental Archaeology from the school of Processualism.
This branch of archaeology was formed as a way to hypothesize different answers to questions that archaeologists formed throughout their excavations, and as a direc...

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