Quotes About Archaeology

I married an archaeologist because the older I grow, the more he appreciates me.

Every continent on Earth has a form of bullroarer - it's the oldest instrument known to man.

As scientists, we keep an open mind, but we have to base our ideas about the past on archaeological evidence.

Art and art only, can make archaeology beautiful; and the theatric art can use it most directly and most vividly, for it can combine in one exquisite presentation the illusion of actual life with the wonder of the unreal world.

We look to the archaeologist for the materials, to the artist for the method.

the fact that early humans did decorate corpses, lay out the bodies in particular postures or bury people with flowers, aligned horns or tools would support the notion that some ritualization of death is a very ancient human activity.

25,000 B.C., the first of the postglacial industries, and the first known culture of Cro-Magnon Man. Bone tools—pins, anvils, polishers, etc.—were now added to those of stone; and art appeared in the form of crude engravings on the rocks, or simple figurines in high relief, mostly of nude women.

The oldest written records known to us are Sumerian;

You can always see an ancient city better when it's been bombed.

Tutte le note erano come a strati, un palinsesto di interpretazione in progresso. Feci archeologia.

It is likely they were not the first humans here because we know people had reached Britain before the glaciers overran most of the island.

Archaeological and material evidence is at least free from the constraints of narrative. Archaeologists have indeed sometimes been dismissive of written sources (this was a trend of the 1980s in particular), which only preserve attitudes of literate and thus restricted élites, whereas archaeological excavations and surveys uncover real life, often of the peasantry, who are badly served by texts.

I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.

The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world.

The archeology of grief is not ordered.

Facing me was a stone pillar, half hidden in the grass, some worn hieroglyphs carved down its side. The hillside rose right behind in a tangle of trees. Laboriously I read the characters one by one: 'Old — Barrier — of — Shirakawa'. It had taken me five and a half hours.

Much of the Persian period is blank for Jewish history, however you look at it. If a good deal of the work of writing and editing the Hebrew Bible went on during this time, it is hardly surprising that we know nothing about it. Yet we are not completely ignorant: for some parts of this 200-year period we have a fair amount of information, and for other parts we have some outline information provided by archaeology and other sources.

Archaeologists gave the military the idea to use aerial photographs for spying and field survey. We are fortunate that the spatial and spectral resolutions of the imagery available to us are so broadly useful for archaeology.

When people initially think of the term 'space archaeologist,' they think, 'Oh, it's someone who uses satellites to look for alien settlements on Mars or in outer space,' but the opposite is true - we're actually looking for evidence of past human life on planet earth.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

People who know very little about ancient Egypt are most likely, if they know anything at all, to have at least a vague idea about the Pharaoh Akhenaten and be able to recognize the face of his beautiful wife, Nefertiti.

Commenced operations in the Valley of the Kings.

Despite being depicted in innumerable cartoons as apelike brutes living in caves, Neanderthals had brains slightly larger than our own. They were also the first humans to leave behind strong evidence of burying their dead and caring for their sick.

Increasingly today, archaeologists are circumventing this problem by a new technique termed accelerator mass spectrometry, which permits radiocarbon dating of tiny samples and thus lets one directly date a single small seed, small bone, or other food residue. In some cases big differences have been found between recent radiocarbon dates based on the direct new methods (which have their own problems) and those based on the indirect older ones.