Archaeology
Archaeology has a close connection to caves: man uses caves as a shelter since prehistoric times. There are artificial and natural cavities, used as shelter, church, storage room, hideout or grave. You will find stone age shelters, medieval cave castles, cellars and much more on this site.
Even more important: caves preserve their content very well. Debris from the ceiling continually covers the contents. Temperature and humidity are ideal for the preservation of most materials. Temperature never changes. And there is no light, especially no ultraviolet light.
Here is some background information about archaeology in caves. Explanations of rather typical things and extraordinary archaeological finds.
Ages
The development of man is investigated by the remains found. Depending on these remains we see that certain ages can be discriminated by the materials they use. So each age is named after the most common or typical remains. Very old, but still helpful is the idea of man using stone, bronze and iron for tools, which results in three ages with according names.
Findings
Some findings are extraordinary, because of their quality, uniqueness and age. It is impossible to list all those finds, but we want to show at least a few of them.
Bone Flute- Oldest String Instrument
- Lionheaded Figurine
- Oldest Human Sculpture
- Venus of Hohler Fels
- Painted Caves
Methods
The methods of Archeology developed over more than a century. The main method is of course excavation, which means to dig into sediments full of human remains. First archaeologists just looked for tools and art, throwing away all other finds. Today excavation is a slow and carefull process intended to preserve as much information as possible including the location, orientation and condition of the findings. And this method is completed by many scientific methods, typically physical and chemical methods to gather as many information as possible about the findings. Most important are of course all methods to determine the age of things.
More
Index
Topics
Hierarchical
Countries
Maps
Search