ELi5 : Why does it seem a lot of archeology began so recently in the 20th and 19th centuries? Why weren’t we digging up stuff much earlier?

Question

It seems many of the most important archeological findings were in the 20th and 19th century. Why did humans wait so long to start digging stuff up?

In: 961

Answer 1

Everyone has gone ham explaining the second part and ignoring the first part.

The answer is that archaeology is really only about 30-40 years old, about 150 years old if you want to include earlier parts but that’s iffy.

The 1980s and 1990s were the first time (generally) when governments started caring about protecting artifacts and cultural heritage. That made the field an actual profession in North America, Europe, and a lot of other places, instead of something that rich people, professors, and students do in exotic places.

It’s obviously a lot more complex than that but a lot of the stuff, even the popular stuff in the 19th century really isn’t archaeology, it’s antiquarianism (rich, usually British or European dudes hunting treasures).

It wasn’t until the 1950s when more ‘scientific’ techniques started to come around and isn’t until the ‘90s when it became a profession. There was also a lot that happened in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s after WW2 and during rebuilding but that’s a lot of more complicated theory/philosophy stuff and mostly stuff that set the scene for the ‘80s and ‘90s.

Even now we’re still really far behind most other fields since we’ve only really 30 years old.

Source – I’m an archaeologist that spends a lot of time researching archaeology. Feel free to ask more questions!