Making Sense

As an archaeologist, myself and other archaeologist try to make sense of the past by creating interpretations based on many factors. As we discussed in class on Wednesday archaeologist look at material remains of our ancestors to try to better understand their lives. Interpretations of archaeologist use the data collected to try and create a picture or window into the past, interpretations in reality are only best educated guess at what life was like in the past and in actuality we will never know exactly what the past was like. There are many factors that play into the creation of an archaeologist interpretation and that includes local and regional geology, geography, ethnography, many different types of artifacts, topography and much  more. We also talked about how trying to make sense of this data though would like to be object sometimes isn't and things that we have no control over can influence archaeological interpretation. This can include gender, birthplace, class, education and even the area of expertise. Thus even though archaeologist may think they are making this interpretation based on objective data, the lens that they view the world may be biased because of those influences, although we may strive for the best explanations of the past, humans are imperfect beings as is everything else on this planet and we may never know everything about the past. In our discussion we talked about archaeologist researching prehistoric art to in the long run create that bigger picture but also find out possible techniques of the ancient artist and more like, the type of dye, stone, iconography and even a better look at different aspects of culture like clothing and social stratification. Again we may never know if there are other meanings of prehistoric art besides the literal because we don't have the context in which they were made. There is a human need to understand the world around us whether it be gods or science, almost like a curiosity and it gives us a slight feeling of comfort. Prehistoric art is studied to fulfill that human curiosity of our past and to better understand where we as humans came from. There are even types of art that even drive this need to make sense of everything such as surrealism.