Archaeological Science - Types of Archaeological Science

Types of Archaeological Science

Archaeological science can be divided into the following areas:

  • physical and chemical dating methods which provide archaeologists with absolute and relative chronologies
  • artifact studies
  • environmental approaches which provide information on past landscapes, climates, flora, and fauna; as well as the diet, nutrition, health, and pathology of people
  • mathematical methods for data treatment (also encompassing the role of computers in handling, analyzing, and modeling the vast sources of data)
  • remote-sensing and geophysical-survey applications comprising a battery of non-destructive techniques for the location and characterization of buried features at the regional, micro-regional, and intra-site levels
  • conservation sciences, involving the study of decay processes and the development of new methods of conservation

Techniques such as lithic analysis, archaeometallurgy, paleoethnobotany, palynology and zooarchaeology also form sub-disciplines of archaeological science.

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