Archaeology (Systematic Excavation)
From the 1880s diggers began to record every find and the layer it came from; Pitt Rivers, Petrie and Wheeler turned treasure hunting into a science that can date and reconstruct the past.
Open in the interactive tree →The digs at Herculaneum (1738) and Pompeii (1748) amazed Europe but were close to treasure hunting. From 1880 Augustus Pitt Rivers excavated on his estate in southern England and insisted that every object be collected, drawn and catalogued, not only the fine ones, while Flinders Petrie in Egypt dated layers by their pottery. In the late 1920s and 1930s Mortimer and Tessa Wheeler developed the grid of squares separated by earth walls that shows each soil layer, a method still used in adapted form. Such careful records are what let radiocarbon dates, ancient DNA and laser surveys be tied to real places and times.
Prerequisites
- Stratigraphy (Steno's Rock Layers)1669Digging layer by layer applies Steno's rule of deeper means older.
- Three-Age System1836Thomsen's ordering of finds by age gave excavators a framework.
Unlocks
- Radiocarbon Dating1949Radiocarbon dates are measured on samples from recorded excavations.
- Lidar Maps Hidden Ancient Cities2012-2026Lidar finds sites that archaeologists then survey and excavate.
- Ancient DNA & Human Origins2022The bones and teeth come from digs recorded by site and layer.