Archaeological science (also known as archaeometry) consists of the application of scientific techniques and methodologies to archaeology.
One can divide archaeological science into the following areas
- Physical and chemical dating methods which provide archaeology with absolute and relative chronologies.
- Artefact studies incorporating (i) provenance, (ii) technology, and (iii) use.
- Environmental approaches which provide information on past landscapes, climates, flora, and fauna as well as diet, nutrition, health, and pathology of people.
- Mathematical methods for data treatment also encompassing the role of computers in handling, analysing, and modeling the vast sources of data.
- Remote sensing and geophysical survey applications comprising a battery of non-destructive techniques for the location and characterisation of buried features at the regional, microregional, and intra-site levels.
- Conservation sciences, involving the study of decay processes and the development of new methods of conservation.
Techniques such as lithic analysis, archaeometallurgy, paleoethnobotany, palynology and zooarchaeology also form sub-disciplines of archaeological science.
Archaeologists can obtain significant additional data and information using these techniques, and archeometry has the potential to alter the understanding of the past. A good example of this is the so-called “Second radiocarbon revolution”, which significantly re-dated European prehistory in the 1960′s (the first radiocarbon revolution was the original introduction of the method to archaeology).
As indicated, one of the most important applications of archaeological science come with the absolute dates it can provide for archaeological strata and artefacts. Some of most important of these include:
- Radiocarbon dating – for dating organic materials
- Dendrochronology – for dating trees, but also very important for calibrating radiocarbon dates.
- Thermoluminescence dating – for dating inorganic material including ceramics.
- Optically Stimulated Luminescence – for absolutely dating and relatively profiling buried land surfaces in vertical and horizontal stratigraphic sections, most often by measuring photons discharged from Quartz grains within sedimentary bodies, although Feldspars are also able to be measured through this technique, complications caused by internally induced dose rates often mean Quartz-based analyses are favoured in archaeological applications.
- Electron spin resonance
- Potassium-argon dating – for dating fossilized hominid remains.
However, archaeologists have applied archaeological science in many other ways as well. A variety of methods have been used to analyse artefacts, either to determine more about their composition, or to determine their provenance. These techniques include:
- X-ray fluorescence (XRF)
- Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS)
- Neutron activation analysis (NAA)
- Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)
- Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS)
Lead, strontium and oxygen isotope analysis can also test human remains to estimate the diets and even the birthplaces of a study’s subjects.
Provenance analysis has the potential to determine the original source of the material used, for example, to create a particular artefact. This can show how far the artefact has travelled and can be used to indicate systems of exchange.
The use of remote sensing has enabled archaeologists to identify many more archaeological sites than they could have otherwise. The use of aerial photography remains the most wide-spread remote sensing technique, but this has been supplemented by the use of satellite imagery, especially with the declassification of images from military satellites. Ground-based geophysical survey is most often used to identify and map archaeological features within identified sites.
