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DO: Archaeology is the study of humans and all facets of human existence in the past, whether historic or prehistoric. To do this, archaeologists need to be familiar with, or specialize in, a variety of interrelated sciences that will help them to interpret and understand the natural and cultural processes that were involved in the formation, origin, or development of archaeological sites or contexts.
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DON'T DO: Archaeolgists do not study dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were extinct long before humans and ancestral humans began to roam the earth.
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DO: Archaeologists are specialists, they are trained experts in the treatment and handling of archaeological materials in their particular field. They take great care in excavating, mapping, drawing, photographing, and documenting in writing all aspects of their excavations. Archaeological interpretation requires the archaeologist to have an understanding of past climatic and environmental factors that will have influenced the lives and activities of the people they are studying. To do this, samples of soils and sediments, animal and plant remains, charcoal and other organic materials are recovered during the course of excavations for analysis later. Materials recovered during legitimate archaeological research are catalogued and maintained in a repository like in a museum or research facility accessions lab or storage facility.
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DON'T DO: Archaeolgists are not experts, however, in every cultural or archaeological context. The field of archaeology in general is extremely broad. For one archaeologist to know about every archaeological context everywhere in the world would be an impossible undertaking. Usually, archaeologists specialize in a particular region, time period, area of research, or aspect of cultural development or change, with a background in aspects related to their speciality. So why is this in the don't do category? Well, because archaeologists can't, and don't, do absolutely everything. |
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DON'T DO: Archaeolgists DO NOT treasure hunt, grave-rob, loot, steal, or SELL archaeolgical materials. Every time an archaeological site is destroyed by opportunistic looters searching for 'treasures', all the most important information, which is KNOWLEDGE, is lost. Archaeological sites do not grow back, once they're gone, they're gone forever and all that knowledge will never be found again. Imagine borrowing a book from the library and finding out that someone had torn pages out of the middle of every copy of that book everywhere in the world, and no one could ever read it again.
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