Archaeologists
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Archaeologists
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XIII (No.7) July 1961
- Year
- 1961
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- ARCHAEOLOGISTS Archaeologists are great treasure hunters. Many of their treasures would sell for little on the market, although they are extremely valuable for what they tell us of hu man history, and fortunes are sometimes spent in finding them. Occasionally, discoveries have great financial as well as cultural value — the golden treasures of Troy, of Myce nae in Greece, and of Egyptian Pharaohs, for example — and then the world at large becomes as excited about them as the archaeologists. Most finds, however, are less spec tacular — perhaps the eye shadow used by an Egyptian beauty, a battered amulet with which a Cretan or a Tro jan kept evil spirits away, or the chipped flint arrowhead with which a primitive hunter secured his day’s food. Scientist and ditch-digger, detective and treasure hun ter — the archaeologist must be all these and more. The men and women who devote themselves to the fascinating science of ancient civilization must practise a sort of ma gic. From old scrolls and shattered pottery, from broken armed statues and ruined temples, they must first recons truct a picture of the past and then breathe life into it. They must take us traveling through time, so that we of the twentieth century A.D. may know how men and women thought and felt thousands of years ago. Picking up a stray legend here, a baffling reference in an almost wornout manuscript there, at times nothing more than a strange local name or superstition, archaeologists slowly fit together isolated bits of evidence of long-forgot ten people and cities. Sponsored by their governments, by private research foundations, or by universities, they then organize expeditions that help uncover the final proof. Some of their greatest discoveries are thus carefully and logically planned. July 1961
- pages
- 89