Archaeology is the study of the material remains of past cultures, from stone tools to stone pyramids, within their excavated contexts. Unlike the hard sciences, such as physics or chemistry, there are no laws in archaeology. Whereas science is concerned with studying regularities that can be observed and tested through experiment, and then verified by repeating the experiment, archaeology has no such system of proof. An archaeological site (or part of it) can only be excavated once, so it is important to do this as carefully as possible, and then record, analyze, and publish all the excavated data, as well as observations made about the excavations. Archaeological evidence is always fragmentary, and archaeologists must analyze and interpret this fragmentary evidence in order to model or reconstruct the past, offering the most probable explanation of ancient cultures, their forms and behavior.
Archaeology studies the long prehistoric periods and cultures in Egypt and elsewhere. The prehistory of Egypt spans perhaps as many as one million years. Most of the material remains that prehistoric archaeologists study are stone tools and the waste from stone tool production (see Chapter 4).
About the time from when there is evidence of early agriculture in Egypt, there is also evidence of the use of pottery, and increasing numbers of potsherds are found at archaeological sites. Potsherds (broken pieces of pots) are important sources of information because pottery styles tend to change rapidly through time and are generally culture specific. Potsherds are useful for classifying late prehistoric as well as Dynastic sites by period and/or culture; sometimes imported, foreign pots are also identified at Egyptian sites.
With the emergence of pharaonic civilization came the invention of hieroglyphic writing (see Figure 2.1), which becomes an increasingly important source of information for all scholars of ancient Egypt. Archaeologists excavating pharaonic sites not only have the evidence of potsherds and many different types of artifacts (including stone tools, which continued to be produced in pharaonic times), but also hieroglyphic inscriptions and graphic art integrated with well preserved structures, especially tombs and associated mortuary monuments. Because archaeological evidence is fragmentary, archaeologists must rely on all forms of information, including texts and pictorial representations, and this is especially true for the study of pharaonic Egypt.
Egyptian archaeology is the study of both prehistoric cultures and pharaonic civilization in the Egyptian Nile Valley and Delta, as well as the surrounding deserts. To the south of the First Cataract, a natural barrier to transportation along the Nile, at modern-day Aswan, was the land of Nubia, which was periodically controlled by the Egyptians. Archaeological evidence of Egyptian activities is abundant there. The ancient Egyptians also left extensive archaeological and textual evidence in the Sinai Peninsula. Although this region was not a part of ancient Egypt, archaeological sites in the Sinai are also relevant to Egyptian archaeology.
Given the extensive body of texts, the archaeology of ancient Egypt is an example of historical archaeology, with the written evidence providing the historical context of excavated finds. Textual evidence greatly expands a more specific meaning of ancient Egyptian finds, its history, forms of government, social organization, and the economy - as well as more elusive beliefs and ideas. In turn, interpretation of the archaeological evidence within its excavated context can reinforce the historical evidence from texts. Occasionally, archaeological evidence contradicts the validity of information conveyed in writing - illustrating the complexity of historical interpretations based on texts.
Archaeological fieldwork in Egypt has been conducted according to the research problems and priorities of particular expeditions. Present-day scholars of ancient Egypt come from a variety of disciplines, which frequently overlap in practice. These include philologists and Egyptologists, historians (of ancient Egypt, the ancient Near East, the Bible, and the classical world), art historians, as well as archaeologists. Historians are usually interested in reconstructing the history of use of the specific site(s) they are excavating, while art historians focus on recording architectural plans and decoration, works of art, and changes in style and design through time. For Egyptologists an important focus of fieldwork is often epigraphic studies, and philologists study ancient texts. Archaeologists can be trained in any one of these fields, or specifically trained in archaeology, including Near Eastern archaeology, classical archaeology (the archaeology of ancient Greece and Rome), anthropological archaeology, and archaeology as taught in departments of archaeology, which are mainly found in European universities. Archaeologists’ training and background strongly influence their focus and methods of investigation.
World History
