Archaeology: The Future of the Ultimate Discipline

What is “archaeology?” It’s the study of the human past through the excavation of its physical remains, right? Does this adequately describe what archaeologists do? BAR readers will probably find this common definition woefully lacking, as, especially in Biblical archaeology researchers often make use of textual sources as well as material remains. But the archaeologist makes use of all sorts of other disciplines, such as geology, anthropology, and even chemistry and physics. In this lecture, the new Dorot Director of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, Matthew J. Adams, makes a case for archaeology as the ultimate academic discipline, integrating tools, methods, and theories from many other disciplines to reconstruct and understand the past. Adams discusses the unique properties of archaeology that make it the “ultimate discipline” and how the pioneering efforts of Biblical archaeologists who integrated Biblical studies and archaeology were part of its foundation. Citing examples of current scholarship in the ancient Near East, Adams goes further to discuss the future of archaeology, and the increasing integration of multiple vectors of research in reconstructing the past.

This was part of the Elusive Biblical Archaeology DVD.