Introducing archaeology and ancient history 1

Archaeology is the study of the material culture (the things) that remain from past communities. In this unit we show you how we recover those remains through archaeological research, and how we can use them to understand the past and its relevance to the present. We examine the cultures of the Mediterranean world (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Iran, and Greece) Asia and Australasia and focus on the period before 1000 BCE. We study the remains of houses, palaces, temples, pottery, tools, weapons, statues, and paintings, and we think about what they can tell us about the way communities organized their societies. We also incorporate the information we learn from written texts as well as from oral histories. Topics include human evolution, origins of farming, the growth of cities, the development of writing, the pyramids of Egypt, the complex societies of the Indus Valley, the Mycenaean kingdoms, and the fall of Troy. Hands-on tutorials explore the archaeological methods used to reconstruct ancient societies.