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Strung Out On Archaeology Essay

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Strung Out On Archaeology Essay
At the beginning of my archaeology class I came in thinking that we would be learning about rocks and pottery and how they are found as well as how people make money doing excavations and selling the materials collected. I soon learned that throughout history there have been great discoveries that tell stories and give us answers to problems from the past. Archaeologist have also shown how past cultures lived and how we have evolved into the culture we have now and what these cultures stand for today. It is very important to make sure all people are informed about archaeology and they realize that it’s to help make our world and culture a better place instead of people thinking it is to make money. Insuring that people understand this it will …show more content…
I have learned from the author, Laurie A Wilkie, that there two ways of thinking about archaeology “First as a mindset, and second as a set of techniques and methodologies that have grown from that mindset”. (Wilkie 2014, 43). This means that we all should recognize that the lives of humans take place in a physical body and that those humans create modifications to the world in which we study. Through our studies of sites around the world we can see how cultures interacted with each other as well as traditions they have kept going for hundreds of years like Mardi Gras in which she studies throughout her book. We can also see how they have changed for the better and how they had huge effects on the cultures they were around. I believe that in this book she wants her reader to see how even the way people act can be a piece of data that archaeologist can look at and see how the person lives each and every day. Wilkie helps show this and put it in perspective by saying, “you are treated differently when you walk into a five-star restaurant dressed in formal wear than you do when you walk in wearing shorts”. (Wilkie 2014, 44). In her research of Mardi Gras, she shows how women do bad things just to get the beads in which they think are really special, which also shows different ways of thinking about archaeology. Her use of collecting

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