Archaeology Quotes

Many years ago, when I was once saying sadly to Max it was a pity I couldn't have taken up archaeology when I was a girl, so as to be more knowledgeable on the subject, he said, 'Don't you realize that at this moment you know more about prehistoric pottery than any woman in England?'

I'm not a believer in the future. The most interesting things are always behind us. I look at everything as archaeology.

I teach myself archaeology, I teach myself Spanish, and that's because it can be fun, it can be useful. So I keep studying. I read books because I still want to study. I don't want to stop.

American archaeology has always attracted lots of amateurs ... They were digging up Indian pottery all over the place.

The past slips from our grasp. It leaves us only scattered things. The bond that united them eludes us. Our imagination usually fills in the void by making use of preconceived theories...Archaeology, then, does not supply us with certitudes, but rather with vague hypotheses. And in the shade of these hypotheses some artists are content to dream, considering them less as scientific facts than as sources of inspiration.

I want to become a student. I want to read Chinese history and go on a dig.

Dead archaeology is the driest dust that blows.

One of the things that I love to do is travel around the world and look at archaeological sites. Because archaeology gives us an opportunity to study past civilizations, and see where they succeeded and where they failed. Use science to, you know, work backwards and say, 'Well, really, what were they thinking?'

In a simple direct sense, archaeology is a science that must be lived, must be "seasoned with humanity." Dead archaeology is the driest dust that blows.

Biblical archaeology was developed early in this century in an effort to substantiate the authenticity of the Biblical account. It's by now generally recognized in Biblical scholarship that it has done the opposite. The Bible is not a historical text, and has only vague resemblances to what took place, as far as can be reconstructed. For example, whether Israel ever existed is not clear; if so, it was probably a small kingdom somewhere in the hills, apparently virtually unknown to the Egyptians.

There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament tradition.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove.

Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.

It's very important to reveal the mystery of the pyramid. Science in archaeology is very important. People all over the world are waiting to solve this mystery.

Archaeology is the study of humanity itself, and unless that attitude towards the subject is kept in mind archaeology will be overwhelmed by impossible theories or a welter of flint chips.

I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development.

Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. ... So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology.

Archaeology is not a science, it's a vendetta.

Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn't going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting.

On the whole … archaeological work has unquestionably strengthened confidence in the reliability of the Scriptural record. More than one archaeologist has found his respect for the Bible increased by the experience of excavation in Palestine. Archaeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics.

It's interesting to see that people had so much clutter even thousands of years ago. The only way to get rid of it all was to bury it, and then some archaeologist went and dug it all up.

We are opening up an enormous new era in archaeology. Time capsules in the deep oceans.

You know, many people believe that we archaeologists are just a collection of old fogies digging around in the ruins after old dried up skulls and bones.

With apologies to the green movement, "sustainability" is a myth. History and archaeology show that societies are always moving to the edge of crisis, "falling forward" through growth, but then responding often successfully to the problems created. What we can hope for is that with a somewhat more controlled level of growth, and with longer-term preparations for change, we can keep responding to the inevitable smaller crises, as they arise, and continue to postpone until later and later the, perhaps ultimately inevitable, end of our civilization.

Archaeology in general is the recovery and study of the material culture of past civilizations. Biblical archaeology is as an application of the science of archaeology to the field of biblical studies. Through the comparison and integration of Scripture with the evidence of history and culture derived from archaeology, new insights into the biblical context of people and events, and sometimes the interpretation of the text itself, are possible. In this way archaeology serves as a necessary tool for biblical exegesis and for apologetic concerns.

Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them.

Archaeology is the anthropology of the past, and science fiction is the anthropology of the future.

I'm so fascinated with the study of people and why they are the way they are. That's my research and my archaeology, if you will, when I get a role. I'm so excited to attack a part from every angle of what makes a person a person.

Nobody brings ancient history and archaeology to life like Adrienne Mayor. From the Russian steppes to China, and from Roman Egypt and Arabia to the Etruscans, she leads the reader on a breathtaking quest for the real ancient warrior women reflected in myths--their daring, archery, tattoos, fine horses, and independence from male control. The book's rich erudition, communicated in sparkling prose and beautiful illustrations, makes it a riveting read.

So what we can answer [as geneticists] is questions about biology, about biological ancestry. But to make any sense of that historically we have to contextualize it - the archaeology, the linguistic pattern, even the climatology.

I wanted to be an archaeologist. But in school you have to take a tremendous amount of statistics for that, and I am not good at statistics. So I hit a real wall with archaeology. It's probably like wanting to be an architect - you think it's all fun and games, and then you have to get out a calculator and you're done.

I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.

We, including many Christians, read the Bible through "eyes" conditioned by, and even accommodated to, modern Western culture plus the influences of messages and ideas from other cultures that are alien to the worldview of the biblical writers. Therefore, in order fully to understand the Bible and allow the Bible to absorb the world (rather than the world - culture - absorb the Bible) we must practice an "archaeology" of the biblical writers' implicit, assumed view of reality.

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

On the whole, mental archaeology was a sordid digging proposition. The evil men did endured, the good was infinitely more ephemeral. You could generally find out whether a man had been a horse-thief, or an embezzler or a wife-beater, if you worked hard enough, but acts of kindness, of charity, a gay spirit, vanished without leaving a trace.

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

Archaeology, I found, comprehended all manner of excitement and achievement. Adventure is coupled with bookish toil. Romantic excursions go hand in hand with scholarly self-discipline and moderation. Explorations among the ruins of the remote past have carried curious men all over the face of the earth… Yet in truth, no science is more adventurous than archaeology, if adventure is thought of as a mixture of spirit and deed.

History may be accurate. But archaeology is precise.

The Bible is an ancient text from an ancient context. We live thousands of miles and thousands of years away from that context, which also represents different cultures. Archaeology is a modern means of revealing both the lost record of the ancient world, and the historical and social world of the Bible. While the purpose of archaeology is not to prove the historicity of the people and events recorded in Scripture, it can help immeasurably to confirm the historical reality and accuracy of the Bible and to demonstrate that faith has a factual foundation.

While many have doubted the accuracy of the Bible, time and continued research have consistently demonstrated that the Word of God is better informed than its critics. In fact, while thousands of finds from the ancient world support in broad outline and often in detail the biblical picture, not one incontrovertible find has ever contradicted the Bible.