Oldest evidence of human cannibalism as a funerary practice

The remains of human bones with cutmarks, breaks and human chewing marks found across northern Europe show that some human groups living around 15,000 years ago were eating their dead not out of necessity, but as part of ...

French cave tells new story about Neanderthals, early humans

A hillside dwelling overlooking the picturesque Rhone Valley in southern France proved irresistible for our ancestors, attracting both Neanderthals and modern humans long before the latter were thought to have reached that ...

Mapping the 'superhighways' travelled by the first Australians

'Superhighways' used by a population of up to 6.5 million Indigenous Australians to navigate the continent tens of thousands of years ago have been revealed by new research using sophisticated modelling of past people and ...

Amazonian crops domesticated 10,000 years ago

As agriculture emerged in early civilizations, crops were domesticated in four locations around the world—rice in China; grains and pulses in the Middle East; maize, beans and squash in Mesoamerica; and potatoes and quinoa ...

A history of the Crusades, as told by crusaders' DNA

History can tell us a lot about the Crusades, the series of religious wars fought between 1095 and 1291, in which Christian invaders tried to claim the Near East. But the DNA of nine 13th century Crusaders buried in a pit ...

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Archaeological record

The archaeological record is a term used in archaeology to denote all archaeological evidence, including the physical remains of past human activities which archaeologists seek out and record in an attempt to analyze and reconstruct the past. In the main it denotes buried remains unearthed during excavation.

The archaeological record on a specific archaeological site is sometimes referred to as the archaeological sequence, or sequence for short. However, the two terms are not exactly interchangeable as the term archaeological record is more global in its meaning and can be applied to artifacts and other evidence such as biofacts and manuports and their associated relationships, as well as the stratigraphy of a site; in contrast, the sequence really refers to the timeline, determined by stratigraphy and/or absolute dating methods.

Thus the archaeological record consists of both known and unknown archaeological sites, with material preserved in-situ; of conserved material such as artifacts in museums and collections as well as archives of archaeological research and interpretation. Records, and the physical results of experimental archaeology also form part of the archaeological record.

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