Abstract
Archaeologists have been working closely with geologists and paleontologists since the beginning of the 19th century, and the basic concepts employed for the time ordering of prehistoric sites were borrowed by archaeologists from geology. The most common example is the subdivision of the prehistoric sequence into Lower, Middle, and Upper Paleolithic, following the tripartite division of the Pleistocene. Geologists participated in prehistoric excavations and in many regions became responsible for describing the site stratigraphy and the paleo climatic interpretation of the deposits. As the approach of regional archaeology evolved, mainly after the 1950s, geoscientists studied the changes of past landscapes with the archaeologists. The rapid evolution of dating techniques opened a new avenue for the involvement of earth scientists in archaeology, and in particular in the dating of prehistoric periods. Finally, the advancements in fields such as mineralogy, magnetic susceptibility, remote sensing, and others increased the potential interactions between archaeologists and earth scientists. At the end of the 20th century, there are probably thousands of archaeologists who have had at least some experience working closely with a variety of earth scientists. It would therefore be presumptuous to assume that my personal view can represent such a large community. I accepted the invitation of the editors of this volume to write this chapter because I felt that over my 40-year career I have been involved with numerous practitioners of science in archaeology. I was originally trained as both an archaeologist and a geomorphologist, but as one cannot do both full-time, I chose to be responsible only for archaeological research.
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Bar-Yosef, O. (2001). A Personal View of Earth Sciences’ Contributions to Archaeology. In: Goldberg, P., Holliday, V.T., Ferring, C.R. (eds) Earth Sciences and Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1183-0_17
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