Quotes About Archaeology

Our history is a material history, not just a succession of thoughts or speech acts.

The earliest inscriptions in Hebrew date from the tenth BCE.

The oldest Phoenician inscriptions date from around 1100 BCE.

The earliest Hebrew texts that have reached us date from the end of the second millennium BCE.

What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches?

You can theorize as much as you want about what you think you're seeing, but until you get out there and dig, you can't tell exactly what it is.

There is a lot of history buried in Chicago that I still have yet to discover.

Looting and site destruction are global problems. We have a tough road ahead, and one key will be developing more collaborations and using new technologies like satellite imagery.

The earliest example known to me of replaced body parts is exemplified by a Mayan skull dating back to 1400 BC. In this skull, false teeth made of stone had been implanted.

In archaeology, context is everything. Objects allow us to reconstruct the past. Taking artifacts from a temple or an ancient private house is like emptying out a time capsule.

They also explain many common points in the archaeological finds of these civilizations as due to man's genetic commonality. Thus

All we can infer (from the archaeological shards dug up in Berkshire, Devon and Yorkshire) is that the first Britons, whoever they were and however they came, arrived from elsewhere. The land (Britain) was once utterly uninhibited. Then people came.

As the Greeks see it, elegance arises from excavation, from the cavity.

The Stones and the Scriptures; The Scriptures and Archaeology; and The World of the First Christians

discovering that hunter-gatherers had constructed Göbekli Tepe was like finding that someone had built a 747 in a basement with an X-Acto knife.

Internet nos ayuda a recordar, pero también nos lleva a abordar el pasado desde una extraña omnisciencia. Esto convierte al pasado -como todo lo demás- en rehén de cualquier arqueólogo con sed de venganza.

The involvement of intelligence agents in the field of Egyptian archaeology, the UFO phenomenon, and other odd pursuits will be discussed in a later chapter. For now, it suffices to point out that psychological warfare, literature, archaeology, and the paranormal not only make for strange bedfellows: in the war years of the last century it was positively an orgy.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

So yes, keep the lid on, buy old books, read old books, seriously consider those scrolls and clay tablets.

The majority of the research I do is archaeological research, but to me, as a professor, the most important thing is to encourage and mentor students.

I'd always been fascinated by archaeology; it was my original career plan as a kid.

Of all the places I've visited in my life, Egypt has been the most fascinating. I've explored almost the whole country: Cairo and the Pyramids, Alexandria, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens and the Nobles.

Archaeologists have been digging up thousands of graves of people called Scythians by the Greeks. They turn out to be people whose women fought, hunted, rode horses, used bows and arrows, just like the men.

Less than 1 percent of ancient Egypt has been discovered and excavated. With population pressures, urbanization, and modernization encroaching, we're in a race against time. Why not use the most advanced tools we have to map, quantify, and protect our past?