TEST ONE

ARCH 323

METHOD AND THEORY OF ARCHAEOLOGY

FIRST SEMESTER 2020/2021

STUDENT ID : 10711813

INSTRUCTOR : William Narteh Gblerkpor, PhD  

 1.The two ideas that shaped the emergence of archaeology as a scientific discipline

in the 19th century are :

a. The Concept of Evolution.

b. The Development Of The Three Age System.

2. The Impact Of The Concept Of Evolution On Archaeology in the 19th Century.

The emergence of the concept of evolution by Charles Darwin in the 19th

century which was communicated through his foundational writings, The Origin Of

Species and The Descent of Man in 1859 and 1871 respectively played a huge role in

the development and establishment of Archaeology as a scientific discipline. Among

the influences that the concept of evolution had on archaeology emerging as a

scientific discipline are :

The concept of evolution first of all led to the emergence of ‘Typology’ in

archaeology. Typology is the classification of artifacts according to their physical and

shared characteristics. This development was as a result of the impact of Darwin’s

works on archaeologists such as Pitt-Rivers, John Evans, and Oscar Montelius. These

archaeologists laid the foundations for the study of Typology in Archaeology upon

taking inspiration from the concept of archaeology. They classified artifacts into

classes (types) which helped to manage a large mass of archaeological data.

Later on, other types of typologies emerged such as Morphological

typology,Chronological typology,Functional typology,Stylistic typology etc.

Another great impact of the Evolutionary Concept was a radical turn in the study

of cultures in Archaeology. This is what came to be known as Evolutionary

Archaeology. This is the notion that if there is a biological evolution , then there can

be cultural evolution. Archaeologists such as Herbert Spencer and others in the 19th

century developed theories that embraced a progressive and a direct explanation of

cultural evolution in which human societies were viewed as progressive through a

constant set of stages, from “savagery through “barbarism” to “civilization” .

Initially, Evolutionary Archaeology was based on human development from foragers

to horticulturalist , to the establishment of agriculture, and eventually rise of

civilizations. Thus, for much of the 19th century evolutionary theory in archaeology

was centered around explaining cultural traits and human history and account for the

significant differences between cultural groups and their current state of living.
 REFERENCES

Renfrew C. and Bahn, C. 2012 (6th Edition). Archaeology Essentials: Theories,

Methods, and Practice. London: Thames and Hudson. Page 26-27.

Tehrani, J. J. & Collard, M. (2002) Investigating cultural evolution through biological

phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles. Journal of Anthropological

Archaeology 21:443– 63.

Bettinger, Robert I.(1991)Hunter-gatherers: Archaeological and evolutionary

requires a different kind of metaphysic from other ‘‘hard’’ theory. New York and

London: Plenum Press.