INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

What should be done with standing ruins? Should ancient buildings be reconstructed, restored as
someone thinks they once were, left in place, or preserved at all? Can archaeo-tourism help or
hurt? What about modern communities around famous sites? Should they not be involved in
designing tourist attractions, museums, and restoration of monuments? Will the plans include
any jobs for the local community members? Will the materials once preserved just fine in the
ground be conserved well, so they will last while they are investigated or displayed?
What benefits can come to the archaeologist by working with local people and descendant
communities? Not only good public relations and support for the project, but also real research
information, such as the identification of artifacts and their past functions in the cultural context.
Though I have no remaining Native Florida people in the region where I work, the local hunters
and fishers are enormously helpful in identifying methods of catching different species and
making a living off the river and the sea. In return, I can show them the kinds of species the
ancient people used to make a living and how fishing might have been the same or different.
What other obligations to the public remain after the project analyses are completed and the
scientific report submitted? Archaeologists should always try to produce popular accounts and
interpretations of what they have found for the general audience. This can be in the form of
displays, booklets, videos, lectures, or other media presentations. Since most of the work is done
with public money, it is only fair that the public benefits. Archaeologists also need to learn to
write for the public, in understandable but not condescending terms. All archaeology today is
public archaeology.
The First People and Culture
Lesson Objectives: Model lifestyles of earliest hominid forms and Lower Paleolithic based on
cultural remains and other evidence, understanding
political issues.
What do the earliest archaeological remains look like?
Remember this is archaeology class, so we will not
discuss the details of different early hominid skeletal
forms and which of the many species is an
evolutionary dead end as opposed to a true human
ancestor (not that all the paleoanthropologists can
agree on this anyhow!). But the true archaeological
remains are the result of cultural behavior, and they are
mostly stone tools.
Was stone the earliest material made into tools?
Probably not, but it is the only one preserved from as