1. the scientific study of the physical evidence of past human societies recovered through collection, artifact analysis, and excavation. Archaeologists not only attempt to discover and describe past cultures but also to formulate explanations for the development of cultures.  Conclusions drawn from study and analyses provide answers and predictions about human behavior that add, complement, and sometimes correct the written accounts of history and prehistory.
   

2. (also sometimes spelled Archeology) The scientific study of the physical evidence of past human societies recovered through the excavation. Archaeology not only attempts to discover and describe past cultures, but also to formulate explanations for the development of cultures.

   Source: LITHICS-Net, Glossary of Lithics Terminology
   

3. the scientific study of past human cultures by analyzing the material remains (sites and artifacts) that people left behind.

   Source: Archaeology Terms

What Were They Thinking?

From the 1882 edition of The American Universal Cyclopædia, published by S. W. Green's Son, New York.

Archaeology (Greek archaios, ancient, and logos, a discourse) is the name now very generally given to the study which was formerly known as that of “antiquities.” The term is well enough understood, although its meaning is not at all definitely fixed. In its widest sense, it includes the knowledge of the origin, language, religion, laws, institutions, literature, science, arts, manners, customs – everything, in a word, that can be learned of the ancient life and being of a people. When so used, it comprehends more or less of several branches of knowledge which are recognized as distinct or independent pursuits, such, for example, as ethnology, philology, history, chronology, biography, mythology, numismatics. In its narrower but perhaps more popular signification, archaeology is understood to mean the discovery, preservation, collection, arrangement, authentication, publication, description, interpretation, or elucidation of the materials from which a knowledge of the ancient condition of a country is to be attained. These materials will be found to divide themselves into three great classes: (1.) written, (2.) monumental, and (3.) traditional. 1. What may be called written archaeology may be again subdivided into palaeography, or diplomatics – that is, the science of ancient writings; and bibliography, or the knowledge of printed books. 2. Monumental archaeology admits of almost endless subdivisions, according to the character of the remains to be studied, which may be works of art, such as buildings, sculptures, paintings, engravings, inscriptions, coins, medals, seals, armorial-bearings, tapestry, furniture, plate, jewels, enamels, glass, porcelain, pottery; works of engineering, such as roads, canals, mines, piers, camps, forts, walls; works of unskilled labor, such as pillars of unhewn stone, caves, dikes, ditches, mounds of earth or stone; articles of dress armor, or personal ornament; tools, weapons, implements, utensils, machines, appliances for locomotion, such as canoes, boats, ships, carriages; models of sepulture, such as mummies, sarcophagi, urns, catacombs, graves; vestiges of man and animals, such as skulls, bones, skins. 3. Traditional archaeology includes as well the unwritten language and oral literature of a people, their dialects, legends, tales, proverbs, rhymes, songs, and ballads, as those sports, customs, ceremonies, rites, and superstitions now beginning to be known by the name of “folklore,” and formerly called “popular antiquities.”

The study of archaeology in modern Europe may be held to date from the revival of letters. It was long almost exclusively confined to the antiquities of the Greeks and Romans. About the middle of the 16^th century, mediaeval archaeology, or the antiquities of the dark and middle ages, began to be cultivated. Egyptian archaeology, or “Egyptology,” as it is sometimes called, made comparatively little progress until the discovery of the Rosetta stone, containing a bilingual and triliteral inscription, which enabled Young in 1819, and Champollion in 1821, to find a key to the hieroglyphics. The more recent discoveries of Botta, Layard, Rawlinson, and others, have already advanced Assyrian archaeology to a point beyond all expectation. Indian archaeology has been successfully prosecuted, especially during the last forty years, chiefly by officers of the East India company. Something also has been done by them and others for Chinese archaeology. Men of letters in the United States have devoted their time to the rude and scanty remains of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America. The archaeology of Central and South America, as it attracted attention much earlier, so its more stately and instructive monuments have much better rewarded such investigations as those of lord Kingsborough, Messrs. Stephens and Catterwood, and others.

The study of archaeology has been largely promoted by the publication, at the expense of the state, in various countries, of the nation chronicles, charters, and records; by societies and clubs contributing to the same end, or printing essays on questions of archaeology; and by the establishment by the state, by associations, or by individuals, of museums for the collection and classification of antiquities. In England, a society for promoting the study of antiquity was founded so early as the year 1572. The irrational jealousy of the government dissolved it in 1604. It was revived in 1707, enlarged in 1717, and incorporated by royal charter in 1751, under the name of the “society of antiquaries of London.” An attempt to institute a similar society in Scotland was made about 1700 by “some honorable and knowing gentlemen,” who resolved to continue their conferences till a complete historical account be made of the nation. But it was not until 1780 that the society of antiquaries of Scotland was incorporated by royal charter. The royal Irish academy for promoting “the study of science, polite literature, and antiquities,” was chartered in 1786. The society of antiquaries of Scotland and the royal Irish academy, have good museums of national antiquities. The British museum in London (established in 1753), besides a great collection of early manuscripts and printed books, has galleries of Assyrian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, British, and mediaeval antiquities. One of the most remarkable collections of antiquities on the continent is that of the royal society of antiquaries of the north, at Copenhagen, arranged so as to illustrate a favorite theory of the Scandinavian archaeologists – that the primitive antiquities of a country may be assigned to three successive ages or periods of stone, bronze, and iron, with as much certainty and precision as the comparative antiquity of geological strata, or periods of the world’s creation, may be determined by the fossils which they are found to contain. The museums of the Louvre and the Hotel de Cluny, in Paris, contain fine collections of Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and an unrivaled collection of mediaeval antiquities. The royal museum at Naples has gathered together the statues, paintings, vases, household utensils, and other objects recovered during the last hundred years from the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These long buried cities may be regarded as being in themselves museums of Roman archaeology.

Archaeology has recently gained new and world-wide interest through the indefatigable labors and rich discoveries of count and gen. Luigi Palma di Cesnola, and Dr. Heinrich Schliemann, the first a native of Italy, but an American citizen, and the last a native and a citizen of Germany. At the close of the civil war in the United States in which gen. di Cesnola served with distinction, he was sent as American consul to Cyprus. He was at once inspired with the idea that the famous island was the door between Asia and Europe, and must be full of relics of the nations which traversed and ruled it three thousand years ago. This was in 1865, and he very soon devoted his whole attention to archaeological investigations. He began excavations at Kitium (the Chittim of the Old Testament), over the buried streets of which there is now the town of Larnaca. Within a year he found the sites of three other old cities, Salamis, Golgos, and Idalium. At Kitium he found that the graves had been plundered, most likely in the time of the early crusades; but he discovered the remains of a temple dedicated to Demeter Paralia, and next to it, in a tomb, a jar with 600 gold coins of the great Alexander and his father, Philip of Macedon. He also found the remain of a Phoenician temple, older than that of Demeter, a marble sarcophagus with a Phoenician head in high relief, and two vases of alabaster. The Greek tombs, more than 2000 of which he opened, contained lamps, bronze mirrors, glass vessels, and other funeral decorations. At Idalium, under the modern town of Dali, 15,000 tombs were opened, the greater part of Phoenician, in which were myriads of the oldest terra-cotta vases of all shapes and sizes, and some Greek vases containing iridescent glass. At Salamis he found nothing of consequence; that city was doubtless despoiled of its art-treasures at an early period. In the ruins of Leucolla he found the remains of a temple with statues, and near it a rock cavern accessible only from the sea, in which was an immense quantity of human bones in a state of petrification. At Golgos he found most of the rich store exhibited by him in London in 1872, which the British museum sought to secure, but which New York acquired. In the course of further exploration he found the sites of nearly a dozen cities and towns, Acte-Achaeon, Amathus, Aphrodisium, Arsinoe, Karpassia, Lapethus, Neo-Paphos, Paleo-Paphos, Soli, Throni, and Visuri. The came his great triumph, at Kurium, where in the treasure-chambers of an unknown temple he found the most wonderful deposits of gold and silver diadems, bracelets, rings of all kinds, armlets, etc., votive offerings of the finest workmanship, among them some of the finest gem-engraving and delicate metal work ever discovered. The extent of his discovery may be judged from the fact that from one treasure-chamber, or series of vaults, he took more than 1200 objects, about half of them gold. Some of the more interesting articles, in a historical view, are: the official seal of Thotmes III., a king of Egypt who conquered Cyprus about 3300 years ago; Babylonian cylinders, or records on fine stone, which Rawlinson and Sayce refer to dates 2700, 3100, and 3500 years ago; a gold armlet of a king of Paphos of six or seven centuries B.C., and others of less clearly defined ancient dates. Rings in the form of asps, some retaining their stone settings or remains of enamel; gold clasps and pendants, beautifully incrusted by a granulating process, and diadems of gold, clasped around the foreheads of skulls, are among the treasures. There is a calyx of gold, nearly six inches in diameter, which circular engraved bands on which are traced stags, hunters, palm trees, and water, in the Egyptian style, an article of remarkable beauty in perfect preservation; there are also numerous articles of silver and bronze of rare interest. But the most valuable portion of the treasure is the large collection of engraved stones. Carnelian, agate, onyx, jasper, chalcedony, and other hard and fine grained stones, were used by the ancient engravers. One specimen, “Boreas carrying off Zephyr,” is a masterpiece of genius; the “Rape of Proserpine” is also very fine. These are in miniature, less than an inch in diameter. Intaglios are in the collection in hard stone, representing Egyptian gods, priests, and worship. There are carvings in alabaster, and others of terra cotta. The objects in bronze, more than 500 in number, are lamps, mirrors, stands, vases, and heads of animals. This wonderful collection, but a portion of which can be here indicated, was purchased for the city of New York, and may be found in the museum of natural history and art, Central park.

Dr. Schliemann’s earliest researches were where he believed would be found Homer’s city of Troy, but it is at least an open question whether the ruins he discovered were of the famous old place, whose existence has been thought scarcely more than legendary, though he was confident that he had identified the temple of Athenae. His late operations were upon old Mycenae, the capital of Argolis, and Agamemnon’s home. He found the ruins of the acropolis, which the people of the vicinage to-day call Agamemnon fort, the pavements of which show the wear of chariot wheels, and the walls the application of bolts and hinges. What the present natives call the tomb of Agamemnon, he found to be the treasury of Atreus, cut into the side of a hill and facing a deep ravine. The interior is in two compartments, the first shaped like a cave, 50 ft. wide and 50 ft. high, and the other square, 21 ft. each way. The walls are of hewn stone, without cement, and were once faced with polished metal. A number of tomb slabs, found near but outside of the acropolis, are believed to mark the burial-places of Agamemnon and his companions. A great number of tombs were opened, but few remains of bodies found. In one place, however,  he found a vault 21 ft. long, 14 ½ deep, and nearly 12 wide, in which there were human remains. One of the dead bodies had been covered with five thin plates of gold, from 18 ½ to 25 inches long and 2 ½ wide, upon which were crosses and gold foil. There were also gold blades, vases, fragments of porphyry, and other sculptures. But the most important discovery was that of a subterranean treasury, dome-shaped, with an entrance 13 ft. long, and a roof of stone slabs over three yards long, supposed to have been a royal treasure-chamber, and covered at a very early period. Here were rude idols of Hera, or Juno, and other female gods; male idols of Assyrian type; idols in the form of a cow, sacred to Juno; an idol with a bird’s head; female forms with the heads of cows, the latter on the handles of vases. There were bronze lances, hatchets, knives, hair-pins, vases, and a tripod. Vases were found in large numbers and great variety of painting. There were large goblets with one and two handles; fragments of a white marble frieze, with spiral ornaments, and part of a necklace, with beads strung on copper wire. In other places he found more idols, copper and iron-headed arrows, a wooden fish, a scepter-head of green stone carved into an Egyptian face, knives and arrows of obsidian, and a glass dish having impressed in it the image of a fly. Still further search disclosed an immense cyclopean house, thought to have been a royal palace. Here he found an onyx finger-ring with figures of hornless cows in intaglio; neck beads; a jasper mold for gold and silver ornaments, having patterns or dies on each of its six sides; axes of green stone and jasper; paintings of warriors in red on a yellow ground, the figures being of an Asiatic type. There were also vases, with handles in the form of crocodiles, a large dragon tripod, and other vessels of brass. Dr. Schliemann has presented this entire collection to the government of Greece. Archaeological researches are in progress in Rome, Pompeii, and in other places.