History of Archaeology - Development of Archaeological Method

Development of Archaeological Method

Attempts at developing an archaeological methedology date back to the Middle Ages. Abu al-Hassan al-Hamadani of Yemen (d. 945) made an early attempt in his encyclopaedic work Al-Iklil for the archaeology and history of pre-Islamic South Arabia. The archaeological method he employed can be summarized as follows: "observing and describing the site; excavating and recording of finds with exact provenance, descriptions and measurements; using knowledge of ancient writings to read Himyarite inscriptions; analysing the finds in light of religious and historical texts and oral history."

The Egyptian historian Al-Idrisi (d. 1251) developed another archaeological methodology in his book Anwar for Egyptology, which included: "reasons for the study of the importance of the pyramids; description of the route to the site; description of the pyramids and their inscriptions; measuring, and checking previous measurements; analysis of the form of the pyramid and reasons for building, with a critical review of literature (more than 22 authorities quoted) on the subject; study of sediments as an indication of the flood level; chemical analysis of clay in building material, by studying its mineral content in order to check place of origin; regular visits to the site to see it in different conditions, and to recheck measurements; noting stones reused at Jeremias Monastery, Saqqara as evidence of earlier dates, an observation confirmed by modern research."

One of the earliest modern archaeologists was William Cunnington (1754 – 31 December 1810) who undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, with his regular excavators Stephen and John Parker of Heytesbury. Cunnington's work was funded by a number of patrons, the last and wealthiest of which was Richard Colt Hoare (1758–1838). Hoare was an extremely wealthy man, having inherited the Stourhead estate from his grandfather in 1785. He turned his attention to antiquarian pursuits and began funding Cunnington's excavations in 1804. The latter's site reports and descriptions were published by Hoare in a book entitled Ancient Historie of Wiltshire in 1810, a copy of which is kept at Stourhead. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of mainly neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, and the terms he used to categorise and describe them are still used by archaeologists today. Recent research by Paul Everill has revealed the first reference to the use of a trowel on an archaeological site in a letter from Cunnington to Hoare in 1808,which describes John Parker using one in the excavation of Bush Barrow and which is in the collections of the Wiltshire Heritage Museum along with many of the artefacts from his excavations.

One of the major achievements of XIX century was the development of stratigraphy, the idea of which (overlapped strata tracing back to successive periods) was borrowed by the geological and palaeontological works of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton and Charles Lyell. Consequently, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology firstly took place in the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites.
In the third and fourth decade of this century archaeologists like Jacques Boucher de Perthes and Christian Jürgensen Thomsen began to put the artifacts they had found in chronological order, on the base of the mammal bones found in the same stratum.
However, the first stratigraphic excavation to reach wide popularity was that of Hissarlik, on the site of ancient Troy, carried out by Heinrich Schliemann, Wilhelm Dörpfeld and Carl Blegen, since 1871. These scholars individuated nine different cities overlapped one another, from Prehistory to Hellenistic Time.

A major figure in the development of archaeological method was the Victorian Augustus Pitt Rivers. Archaeology was still an amateur pastime, but Britain's colonial period had provided the opportunity to study antiquities in many other countries. Pitt Rivers himself, having caught the bug during his military career, brought many artefacts back from overseas and, having inherited a large estate with numerous prehistoric features, collected more artefacts off his own land. From his personal collection (the nucleus of the museum named after him, in Oxford), he developed a typology, something few had thought of doing but which would be of enormous significance for dating purposes.