Archaeology at the Crossroads of the Humanities and Natural Sciences

Abstract

In this study archaeological sites are defined as objects that consist of two major components. One of them is refered as culturological and the other one as natural-historical. The first component consists mainly of the artefacts and thus this is the main supplier of cultural-historical information. Because of that extracting of such information and study of it is one of the main tasks for archaeology as one of the humanities The second component includes eco-facts, nature-facts and so-called cultural-natural objects. All оf them have natural origin or have taken shape under strong natural impact. There is thus every reason for regarding this second component as the basis for archaeology’s natural-scientific repository. It provides materials for geological, palaeobotanical, palaeozoological, chemical and other investigations. It must be strongly emphasized that such knowledge means little without a cultural-historical context as without it, such knowledge has no purpose or focus. In this article it is demonstrated that the natural-historical component is an integral part of any archaeological site. It is undetachable from the culturological component. They cannot be separated from each other. A vivid material embodiment of the link between the two is provided by the cultural layer. Essentially, it is impossible to investigate meaningfully the two components in isolation – independently of each other. As a result the actual material we work with, its content and character assign archaeology a place at the intersection of the humanities and the natural sciences. We must assume that in the future it will develop as a multi-disciplinary subject which is first and foremost one of the humanities.

Keywords:

essence of archaeological sites, cultural-historical and natural-historical components of archaeological sites, archaeology as a multi-disciplinary subject