Thursday, 24 September 2009

Treasure

Some guy found a huge pile of gold stuff while metal detecting in Staffordshire. I would like to find something like that.

Quite often customers confuse archaeology with palaeontology and make Indiana Jones jokes. I'm not like Indiana Jones, really. I realise that's hard to believe. Archaeology is concerned with the study of past human activity, culture and society through found artifacts and buildings etc. There is an element of overlap when it comes to the fossil record of human ancestry, but not much. Given humans have only been around for the blink of an eye in geological timescales, it's a small (but very interesting) area of the subject. A good example of palaeontology and archaelogy working together is studying the spread of tools across the continents. It's a useful addition to the hominid fossil record, and within more restricted ranges even the use of specific materials and designs can be tracked. Shows how people were moving from place to place, and perhaps early signs of trading and so on.

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