1.0 History and Archaeology (video)

1.0 History and Archaeology (video)

The discipline of Archaeology is how we move from artifacts and features like pits in the ground to information about the ancient cultures that created those features. The question of why we do Archaeology really is a broader question about why we're interested in history at all. If you're interested in the past it's because you think the past has important lessons for us today and for possibly directing our future progress. Those lessons, if you only rely on the historic record, only cover a very small amount of the past. Archaeology gives you access to the whole spectrum of the human past. Fifteen thousand in America - fifteen thousand years of lessons. If you look at the world, people have been around for one and a half million years or more. So it gives you access to millions of years of lessons about the past, and for much of that there are no historic records. So Archaeology is the only way to get that information.

Brad Lepper

59 seconds

MPEG-4