Perhaps you have already asked yourself: what is archeology for? Why did this science come up? Let’s try to answer some questions about this subject.
At first, archeology was a science that was only concerned with studying the past. So it was with the first archeology students, in the 18th and 19th centuries, whose main occupation was to check the veracity of information from the past. For example, they wanted to check whether what the Bible said was like that or not, if the information in the book “The Iliad” was really true, if the descriptions of places contained in books were real, etc.
Another field of study in archeology in old times was the origin of humanity on Earth, human evolution and other related subjects. But today, what is archeology for exactly? What does it study?
The central concern of this science nowadays is people and their identities: men, women, children, rich, poor, homosexuals, different religions, etc.
Furthermore, archeology addresses diversity. People and communities very different from us have inhabited and frequented the same places as we do today. And how did they interact and use these spaces? These questions make us take a much more sensitive look at history.
For these reasons, it’s much more appropriate for us to speak of “archaeologies”, in the plural, as the subjects addressed are very diverse; and, above all, they’re very relevant to our society.
Therefore, archeology, contrary to popular belief, does not focus only on the study and understanding of the past, but mainly concerns itself with the societies that we’ll leave for the future, just as the peoples of the past left us the society we live in.
Text by: Cris Amarante & Débora Blair
Translation: Débora Blair
Photo on the top: Archeological site “Engenho dos Erasmos”, city of Santos, state of São Paulo, Brazil.
