The archeology is a discipline whose ultimate goal is the knowledge of human groups in the past through its material remains.Through the movable and immovable vestiges and their spatial and chronological context, attempts are made to extract information from the different aspects of the life of the populations of the past, that is, from the social organization, the economic, political, ideological, religious system …
WHAT DO ARCHAEOLOGISTS LOOK AT?
-THE MIDDLE
First of all, archaeologists pay our attention to the place where the archaeological remains are located , their spatial context, topographic location, natural defenses, natural resources of the environment, proximity to communication routes, distribution of sites from the same period in the environment … that is, we try to find an answer to why a human group decides to install in a certain place in the territory.
-THE DISTRIBUTION OF SPACE
Another aspect that is always the object of our analysis is the distribution and organization of the habitat space.
How the areas of housing, production, storage, common areas, etc. are distributed and their characteristics, give a lot of information about what life was like in ancient societies that we are trying to understand.
-THE FURNITURE MATERIAL FOR EVERYDAY USE
All the movable material recovered in an archaeological excavation is carefully collected, inventoried and studied.
Among this material, it is very important, from the Neolithic, the study of ceramics , which gives a lot of information about the type of diet and eating habits, as well as about the cultural tradition of that population and the possible cultural influences received from other populations more or less distant.
The study of lithic material is also very prominent , which offers important data on hunting, gathering, agricultural production and on the processing that food receives before consumption.
-CRAFT AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTIONS
The location, dimensions and characteristics of the craft areas and what products were made in them. This study offers us data on the type of social organization, in whose hands were the means of production, importance of exchange relations with the outside …
-SINGULAR OR PRESTIGE ELEMENTS
They allow us to know things about the complexity of a society and, because these goods are usually exotic and scarce in the area in which the population studied is located, they also give us information on where and to what extent the exchange networks extended with distant populations and with it the routes of entry of new cultural influences.
-THE FUNERAL WORLD
The way of treating the dead in a society is usually a faithful reflection of that society in question. In addition, it is perhaps the main gateway that archaeologists have to the rituals and religious beliefs of the past.
-THE STUDY OF HUMAN REMAINS
Related to the previous point, the anthropological study of the recovered human remains makes possible the knowledge of demographic, social, food and disease details in the society studied through its archaeological remains .
-TIME. THE CHRONOLOGY
In archaeological study it is also of primary importance the changes that occur, over time, in all the aspects that we have been mentioning in the previous paragraphs, and the origin and causes of these changes. Each element has its meaning in its chronological context, so it is very important to correctly place each thing in its proper time.
It is therefore vital that is rigorous the excavation method we use the archaeologists , that is, the stratigraphic method. This is then completed with laboratory analyzes that offer absolute dates of key points of said stratigraphy.
