A Brief History of Archaeological Research and Thought

Early Inquiries on the Past

While archaeology as a distinct scientific discipline did not really begin until the late 19th century, people have been interested in the material remains of past society for as long as people have lived near ancient monuments. Some of the earliest excavators are now objects of archaeological inquiry in their own right. For example, the New Kingdom Egyptian pharaohs (1550–1070 BCE) excavated and reconstructed the Sphinx, which was originally built a thousand years earlier, around 2500 BCE (Hadingham 2010).

Another example was Nabonidus, a Babylonian king (555–539 BCE) who excavated ancient Assyrian buildings and temples (Steinmeyer 2024). He did not do this out of a scientific interest in the past, however, but because of his interest in ancient spirituality. He also collected numerous religious statues, which may have been in an effort to help him gain political power. (It did not seem to work, as he was overthrown by Cyrus the Great.)

Jumping ahead another 1,400 years or so, and moving into Europe, we come to the beginning of the Renaissance. During this time period, scholars were attempting to understand the past rationally rather than through myth. This coincided with an artistic interest in rediscovering Classical Antiquity. During this time, one notable scholar, who is sometimes called the “Father of Classical Archaeology,” was Ciriaco de’ Pizzicolli (1391–1455). Pizzicolli carefully recorded countless numbers of Greek and Roman antiquities, focusing primarily on the inscriptions. Unlike many antiquarians of his time, he actually traveled to see the sites himself and took extensive notes, which were eventually published (Department of Archaeology, University of York 2013).

Antiquarians

Following in his footsteps, early antiquarians in Europe realized that Greece and Rome were not the only places where an enterprising scholar could find remains of the past. (Antiquarian is a term used to describe generalized scholars who had an interest in the past before archaeology really became a discipline. Antiquarians were mostly concerned with discovering exotic items that they could display in museums or in their private collections.) Many scholars began their investigations in their own backyards.

For example, John Frere (1740–1807) excavated at Hoxne, near his home in England. Frere found flint tools associated with extinct animals, illustrating that ancient humans had created these tools for hunting during the Middle Pleistocene (Society of Antiquaries of London 2024). This was pretty radical at a time when many still believed that the Earth was a mere 6,000 years old, and that these tools might have been made by natural circumstances or by fairies.

Around the same time, museums across Europe were in a bit of a competition to collect the biggest, most exotic archaeological resources from around the world. Giovanni Belzoni (1778-1823) was one of the major collectors of Egyptian artifacts for the British Museum. A fascinating man in his own right, he was a circus strongman and a hydraulic engineer before he began working in archaeology. He is remembered by some as the “Great Belzoni,” and in addition to collecting ancient artifacts, he also took careful notes and sketched depictions of the ancient architecture. Others, however, see him (along with most of the collectors of this era) as little more than grave-robbers, taking treasures back to Europe with little care for context or recognition of their cultural patrimony (Devon and Exeter Institution 2016).

One more antiquarian, Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) was famous in his day for finding the site of the legendary city of Troy in 1873 (now the city of Hisarlık, Türkiye), from the ancient Greek epic The Iliad. His is another example of archaeology as treasure hunting, as Schliemann and his team sought riches for display and did irreparable damage to the site in the process. Schliemann was not careful in his field methods. Thought by contemporaneous scholars to be mythical, Schliemann and his team found a large cache of riches that he attributed to King Priam, which turned out to be over a millennium older than the events in The Iliad! A famous photo shows Schliemann’s wife Sophia wearing the jewels he attributed to Priam, something that archaeologists would never do in the modern day (Solly 2022; Oelze 2021).

Heinrich Schiemann	Sophie Schliemann

Moving into the newly formed United States, a man who was sometimes called the first American anthropologist was also a Founding Father: Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826). (Yes, that Thomas Jefferson.) There was a burial mound on his property at Monticello. At the time, many of the recently arrived European settlers had racist ideas about the technological capabilities of the Indigenous peoples of the continent, holding that their ancestors would not have had the engineering know-how to construct these mounds. Jefferson decided to excavate the burial mound—and he excavated carefully, following the natural stratigraphic layers. (This was rare at a time when most antiquarians simply pulled out the nicest artifacts, leaving everything else behind). Noting the similarities between the artifacts found in the mound and those still in use by Indigenous peoples of the area, Jefferson argued against a separate race of “Moundbuilders.” However, he was too busy with other matters to investigate outside of his own home (Zeichmeister 2010).

Early Archaeologists

The archaeological work that Thomas Jefferson failed to carry out fell to Ephraim G. Squier (1821-1888) and Edwin H. Davis (1811-1888), who mapped, described and classified mounds across the eastern US. While not full-time archaeologists themselves, they represent the beginning of the stage of descriptive archaeology. While antiquarians were concerned with collecting the biggest and the best objects, descriptive archaeologists realized that there was much to learn from the details. Their incredibly detailed survey maps are all that remain of many of the mounds in the eastern US today, which were destroyed due to development by European settlers. Despite their close attention to detail, Squier and Davis were still subject to some of the racist beliefs of their time; like most other Euro-American scholars of their time, they thought that Native Americans could not have built the mounds. This was only corrected by Cyrus Thomas and Frederick Ward Putnam in the late 19th century (1800s), who were able to demonstrate that there was no difference between modern Indigenous people and the people buried in the mounds. The modern Indigenous people were descended from the people buried in the mounds!

Building Chronologies

The next major step in the development of archaeology as a scientific discipline was an increasing focus on chronology and the establishment of culture history. As we’ve seen, dating is essential in understanding our archaeological past. In the early 20th century, archaeologists began using artifacts to construct “culture histories,” basically establishing chronologies for the artifacts found in different parts of the world. Since this was before the invention of radiocarbon dating, most of these chronologies were constructed through relative dating methods (see Dating Methods chapter). Alfred V. Kidder (1885–1963), who worked in the American Southwest, was a champion of this. He developed early ceramic seriation (a series of ceramic styles) that allowed him to put together a timeline for southwestern prehistory that is still considered more or less accurate today (National Park Service 2021).

Now that archaeologists had begun making careful descriptions and constructing clear chronologies, some archaeologists began to see the potential for archaeology to be able to address big questions. One of these archaeologists was Gordon Childe (1892–1957), who worked in Near East and European prehistory. He was sometimes called “the great synthesizer” for how he was able to bring together data from around the world and use it to construct overarching theories about the development of agriculture, the growth of cities, and humanity’s stories writ large. He was especially interested in high-level theoretical questions, like “Why do civilizations change?”, which he answered through a model based in Marxist ideology. He coined the terms “Neolithic Revolution” (referring to the transition to agriculture around 10,000 years ago) and “Urban Revolution” (referring to the development of the first states and the movement of many people into cities around 5,000 years ago.). These terms are still used today, although we now realize that they are somewhat incomplete. There is a great deal of regional, and cultural, and temporal variation, and not all societies followed Childe’s model (Sherratt 1989).

In the United States, H. M. Wormington (1914–1994) was interested in these smaller changes, focusing on mid-range questions that linked artifacts in the ground to specific actions by people in the past. She once said, “Artifacts themselves are not important. It’s the information they can provide about culture and about people.” It is worth noting that there was still a significant amount of bias against women in scientific fields when Wormington began her research; in fact, when studying for her Ph.D. at Harvard, she was asked to sit in the hallway to take notes, so that she would not be distracting to the men in the class. Despite this, Wormington became a well-respected archaeologist, working at the Colorado Museum of Natural History, and publishing books about the archaeology of the American Southwest

Processualism

It was around the mid 20th century that archaeology really began to come into its own as a scientific discipline. Beginning with descriptive archaeology and culture history, archaeologists, like Childe and Wormington, had also shown that archaeology could be used to address significant mid-range and high-level research questions as well.

This coalesced into a movement that, at the time, was called “The New Archaeology” but which now is generally recognized as the beginnings of Processual Archaeology. Processualists emphasized the science of archaeology. Louis Binford (1930–2011) was perhaps the strongest proponent for this approach. He argued that…

Archaeology should ask big questions.

Archaeology should focus on methods.

Archaeology should be scientific.

Archaeology should contribute to anthropology.

Processual archaeologists tend to focus on technological trends or questions around subsistence and the environment, and they construct models of change at the societal level based around themes. For a processual archaeologist, good research can only be conducted through clear hypothesis testing and model building. The motivating forces and ideas, or the thought processes of individual people, which do not leave a trace in the archaeological record, are generally considered irrelevant. Instead, processualists focus on the large-scale society changes that are evident from the archaeological record, ignoring more qualitative or individualized experiences (Kelly 2011).

Post-Processualism

Archaeologists today try to address this problem. Scientists who specialize in Marxist, post-colonial, Indigenous, Black, feminist, and queer archaeology (which points out that peoples of the past often did not conform to our Western notions of gender and sexuality) show that our interpretation of the archaeological past can be skewed in ways that erase the perspectives of women; Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; LGBTQIA+ persons; and other marginalized groups. Archaeologists have done important work to present these important perspectives that have been previously obscured. For example, the Estate Little Princess Archaeology Project in St. Croix is administered by members of the Society for Black Archaeologists. The project was founded by Ayana Omilade Flewellen and Justin Dunnavunt as an interdisciplinary project including both US and Crucian archaeologists. Flewellen has also done important work in post-emancipation archaeology in Texas and changes in adornment and dress from before and after emancipation from a Black feminist perspective (Surana 2020; UC Berkeley Archaeological Research Facility 2025).

One major critique of Post-Processual Archaeology is that it downplays the role of scientific inquiry in how we interpret the past. As a result, archaeologists such as Robert Preucel and Patty Jo Watson (Preucel 1991) have tried to bridge the gap between the Processual and Post-Processual approaches to the archaeological record.

Diversity and Equity in (Re-)Interpretations

As we’ve seen, archaeologists can contribute to our understanding of society by providing evidence that challenges common assumptions about the way things are, for better or worse. However, sometimes archaeological interpretations are negatively impacted by unquestioned assumptions that the archaeologists hold themselves. Nowhere is this more clear than in archaeological treatments of sex and gender over the course of the 20th century.

Through most of the 20th century, archaeologists (who were mostly male and mostly white) were guilty of assuming that the patriarchal gender norms of recent European history were universal. They assumed that anything that was done in the past that was worthwhile was done by men. Conferences on “Man the Hunter” attributed most of the toolmaking to men, with ancient peoples’ cultural value placed on the hunting of animals, and scholars generally assumed that the cave paintings and other artwork were also done by male artists.It is only more recently that more focused studies have been challenging some of these assumptions, and in some cases, proving them wrong outright. This is a good illustration of the correctional nature of science, but it is also a stark reminder that science is part of culture. The biases that are present in a scientist’s culture will come out in the research that they do. Biases may affect:

• What questions we ask.
• Who asks the question.
• What data is observed.
• How data is interpreted.
• When theories are accepted.

No one person can combat all sources of biases. Instead, archaeologists work as a community of professionals to bring different viewpoints and perspectives into focus. For example, the Society of Black Archaeologists (2024) seeks to do the following:

• lobby on behalf of and ensure the proper treatment of African and African Diaspora material culture;
• encourage more people of African descent to enter the field of archaeology;
• raise and address concerns related to African peoples worldwide;
• highlight the past and present achievements and contributions that people of African descent have made to the field of archaeology;
• ensure the communities affected by archaeological work act not just as objects of study or informants but are active makers and/or participants in the unearthing of their own history

Similar groups exist for Indigenous, queer, and feminist archaeologists, archaeologists with disabilities, and many other identities. Each of these perspectives are invaluable, yet individually incomplete. We therefore have to combine all perspectives to work towards a more accurate understanding of the archaeological record. For example, Mesoamerican scholar Chelsea Blackmore is founder of the Queer Archaeology website, and examines public interactions in ancient Mesoamerica from both queer and feminist perspectives. Her work does not necessarily involve sexuality, but “queering” the past by challenging all kinds of binary understandings and assumptions about the archaeological record. She applies this to her work on Classic Maya class identity (Archaeological Institute of America 2025; Queer Archaeology 2025).

Conclusion

Archaeological theory is vital to interpreting what we find in the archaeological record. As you continue reading other chapters in this book, keep Figure 2 in mind. The physical artifacts archaeologists examine are just one small piece of what archaeologists seek to understand. The case study below illustrates how this blending of theory and artifacts allows us to build a more complete picture of the daily practices of past peoples.

Case Study: Gender and Other Visual Representations of Iron Age Britain

The Iron Age is a period of later prehistory in Britain, situated from about 800 BCE to the time of Julius Caesar’s “conquest” of the island in 43 CE. The inhabitants of the island were made of different groups of people with distinct identities, cultural practices, and material culture, often referred to by classical Greek and Roman writers as tribes. Though archaeology confirms the variety between the Iron Age peoples of Britain, they have often been lumped together under a shared Celtic identity and culture. Because they had no written language, social interpretations relating to various aspects of identity, including gender identity, have been reliant on the modern interpretation of archaeological evidence, testimonies from classical Greek and Roman sources, and present-day social constructions.

Archaeological work over the last three decades has yielded a more nuanced view of social identities in Iron Age Britain, particularly when it comes to age, gender, and status. Indeed, when burial goods and burial locations are taken into consideration, age appears to be a defining social factor in Iron Age Britain, rather than gender (Giles 2012; Matias 2015). Burial analyses show equal distribution in status items like chariots (Pope and Ralston 2011). Additionally, isotopic analysis from Wetwang in East Yorkshire shows no gender distinction in diet (Jay & Richards 2006).

Despite this, modern visual representations of people in Iron Age Britain found in textbooks, museum displays, and popular archaeological books often suffer from gendered stereotypes and a lack of representation when it comes to displaying people of different ages, disabled bodies, etc. These images are often influenced by masculine Classical ideologies as well as androcentric archaeological perspectives despite the move toward a more feminist archaeology and feminist interpretations of the archaeological record (Matias 2015; Pope and Ralston 2011). The continuing reproduction of these images often perpetuates the same masculine, androcentric stereotypes and images of the past (Fries, et al., 2017; Coltofean-Arizancu, et al. 2021).

For example, there are numerous images of Iron Age warriors for the British Iron Age, where a single man is carrying a sword and shield and staring off into the distance. Swords from the period, like the Kirkburn sword, were items passed down from generation to generation and deliberately deposited for burial (Giles 2008). Their nature could have been symbolic and not relegated to a particular gender. However, portrayals of women in these contexts are rare; for example, the rebel queen Boudica, mentioned in the classical sources by Tacitus and Cassius Dio, is oftentimes the only woman portrayed in a martial context in archaeological representations of the period. The portrayal of one, exceptional woman alongside other male warriors is not enough to subvert the trope of the masculine warrior.

Women are far more likely to be depicted in domestic contexts and with children in representations of Iron Age Britain, and those domestic depictions are deliberately juxtaposed against images of more martial men (Ballard 2007; Matias 2015). There is little evidence in the archaeological record that suggests that women were more likely to undertake these roles during the period—indeed, across the discipline it is becoming clear that it is difficult to define who did what (Coltofean-Arizancu, et al. 2021). In cases like this, it is important to acknowledge the possibility of difference, rather than falling back on personal bias or stereotypes. When it comes to visual representations of the past, it is better to see many examples of difference, such as in Giles (2012), where there is an illustration of a man holding a child during one of the chariot burials at Wetwang, East Yorkshire.

Iron Age Britain is also missing more visual representations of very young and very old individuals. The elderly are rarely portrayed except in a ritual context, such as leading rites (Matias 2015). Young children are also missing from this narrative, and both demographics are more likely to be shown in passive roles, with children being carried or the elderly simply standing (Matias 2015). This ignores the life history approach, which states that children and the elderly would have been active in many roles, such as the elderly in terms of child care and even children in domestic activities (Coltofean-Arizancu, et al. 2021). A lack of “formal” (i.e., in cemeteries) or even archaeologically visible burial practices for the British Iron Age means that the demographics are difficult to infer based on burials alone (Harding 2016). However, this does not mean that visual representations of Iron Age peoples must always skew toward young, healthy adults. This is another case where Giles (2012) shows a good example of difference in visual representation, because there is a broad range of ages present in the illustration of the Wetwang burial, all of them active and mourning.

What does all of this mean? Visual representations in archaeology, whether they occur in museums, textbooks, or popular books, carry weight and an unspoken message about people in the past. Showing the same type of stereotypical image can lead to the public thinking of the past in a very specific and oftentimes erroneous way. They might think of women as only caregivers and men as warriors, and the past as a place without children or the very elderly. They might only think of people with certain skin tones, or abled bodies despite what the archaeology says – one only needs to review the controversies surrounding Cheddar Man and Whitehawk Woman in Britain (Romey 2019). Therefore, it is important to keep producing images that are reflective of the diversity we see in the archaeologial record, in order to avoid thinking, “The past was always this way.”

About the Author

Dr. Jo Zalea Matias is a lecturer in Anthropology at Wilbur Wright College and Triton College. She specializes in issues of gender and identity in Iron Age Britain and France, and has a keen interest in popular media and academic representations of the past, particularly in terms of gender, as well as the archaeological use of social media. In her free time you can usually find her devouring a sci-fi or fantasy book and drinking bucketloads of tea.