Prague, Czech Republic

Archaeology of Prehistory and Middle Ages

Table of contents

Archaeology of Prehistory and Middle Ages at Charles University in Prague

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: humanities
University website: www.cuni.cz
Years of study: 4

Definitions and quotes

Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, while in Europe archaeology is often viewed as either a discipline in its own right or a sub-field of other disciplines.
Prehistory
Human prehistory is the period between the use of the first stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago and the invention of writing systems. The earliest writing systems appeared c. 5,300 years ago, but writing was not used in some human cultures until the 19th century or even later. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different dates in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Archaeology
An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her.
Agatha Christie denied having made this remark, which had been attributed to her by her second husband Sir Max Mallowan in a news report (1954-03-09)
Prehistory
But the most remarkable thing about prehistoric naturalism is not that it is older than the geometric style, which makes so much more of a primitive impression, but that it already reveals all the typical phases of development through which art has passed in modern times and is not in any sense the merely instinctive, static, a-historical phenomenon which scholars obsessed with geometric and rigorously formal art declare it to be. This is an art which advances from a linear faithfulness to nature, in which individual forms are still shaped somewhat rigidly and laboriously, to a more nimble and sparkling, almost impressionistic technique.
Arnold Hauser. The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999
Archaeology
History is too serious to be left to historians.
Ian Macleod, The Observer (July 16, 1961)
Geological processes ranging from microscopic to global shape the Earth's surface. EU-funded researchers attempted to answer the question: 'What can we learn about metamorphism through the study of minerals in mountain belts?'
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