Strongly influenced by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, the British anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917), and his American counterpart Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), both published important works in the 1870s arguing that human societies had evolved from a state of savagery (primitive hunting) through barbarism (simple farming) to civilization (the highest form of society). Morgan’s book, Ancient Society (1877), was partly based on his great knowledge of living Native Americans.

It was a French customs inspector, Jacques Boucher de Perthes (1788–1868), working in the gravel quarries of the Somme river, who in 1841 pub-lished convincing evidence for the association there of human artifacts (of chipped stone, what we would today call “hand-axes” or “bifaces”) and the bones of extinct animals

In the same period, around 1675, the first archaeological excavation of the New World – a tunnel dug into Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Moon – was carried out by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora.

The main thing to remember is that every view of the past is a product of its own time: ideas and theories are constantly evolving, and so are methods.

It could be argued that the whole philosophy of archaeology is implied in the questions we ask and the form in which we frame them.

Chairman Mao coined the slogan “Let the past serve the present,” but that was sometimes used as an excuse for the deliberate destruction of ancient things.

surviving fragments of the Berlin Wall which once divided East from West Germany but which was opened and torn down in 1989.

Plotting the find sites on a map shows that these petrospheres were often located in the vicinity of Neolithic recumbent stone circles.

This painting was discovered in the Bulu Sipong cave on Sulawesi in 2016 and recent analysis has shown that it is the “oldest pictorial record of storytelling” and the “earliest figurative artwork in the world”, and is at least 43,900 years old. (The oldest known drawing in the world, a 73,000-year-old abstract scribble, was found in South Africa in 2018.)

Reverse engineering a bronze cannon from theLaBelleshipwreck

slighted to clear access to the drove way

Open to Exploration

The crayon, or perhaps more accurately “crayon-like object”, is 22-milimetres long and seven-millimetres wide, an elongated structure comprised primarily of haematitite, although with some small hard pieces of other minerals embedded.

ethics of video games in archaeology

The 74 pieces, acquired legally at the time by the former Spanish ambassador to Ecuador, were given to the Museo de América for restoration on the condition that they be returned when asked.

Peru seeks repatriation of 400 cultural artifacts from New York

A Historic Manuscript on Aztec Life Is “Virtually Repatriated

Cusco strike: Archaeology-concession decree repealed

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9,000-Year-Old Decapitated Skull Found under Amputated Hands

Ancient tunnels discovered underneath Mexican city of Puebla

How Peru is using drones to protect its archaeological treasures

step trench