Question

point wise explain beteeen prehistoric archaeology and new archaeology

Answer 1

prehistoric - before written historic accounts.

Historic is during times where historical records are more prevalent and therefore archaeology and written sources are used to test and corroborate theories.

There is also a third option which is proto-historic and to be honest this is a moveable feast on how you treat this for instance Egypt has lists of Dynasties going back millenias BC but very little else in terms of long prose and detail, then you have the poetical/philosophical greek writers and the Roman Writers all had certain slants and their historical/factual "accuracy" is constantly under scrutiny but then again most historical sources are in any case does it make them any less relevant?

578 Views

Upvote

 

Comment...

Promoted by UpGrad.com

 

Post graduate diploma in Machine Learning and AI with IIITB.

Learn classification algorithms, deep learning, NLP, reinforcement learning and graph models with UpGrad!

Learn More



Durlav Rayamajhi, M.A Anthropology & Archaeology, Tribhuvan University (2018)

Answered Mar 24

there is only one difference,

Prehistoric archaeology studies the time period when the writing culture wasn't developed or the writing are proto writing which we cant understand, historic period is after the time when the writing culture began, most scientist agree that the time period before the 5300BP is prehistoric and the time period after that is historic, but what you have to understand is, you have to contextualize, for different societies and culture their history and prehistory is different, their prehistory would be the time before their native writing culture began,

So the only difference here is, beginning of the writing culture. Research methods and other techniques or ways of analysis would be same for all.

57 Views

Upvote

 

Comment...



Anonymous

Answered Apr 22, 2016

Prehistoric archaeology deals with the unwritten material culture whereas historic archaeology often has written material culture to bank on.

Most of the historic archaeology also works with both material as well as archived  manuscripts etc/ Prehistric archaeology has only the material culture that is left behind. Hence the Harappan Civilization which has a written script, yet undeciphered, falls into what is called protohistoric.

Hope the above clarifies the difference