Archaeology Subfields

Indigenous archaeology is archaeological research which is conducted by the descendants of the people who built the towns, camps, burial sites and middens that are under study. The most explicitly indigenous archaeological research is conducted in the United States and Canada by Native Americans and First Peoples.

The study of ships and sea-faring is often called maritime or marine archaeology, but the study also includes investigations of coastline villages and towns, and other topics related to life on and around the seas and oceans.

By and large paleontology is the study of pre-human life forms, primarily dinosaurs. But some scientists who study the earliest human ancestors, Homo erectus and Australopithecus, refer to themselves as paleontologists as well.

Post-processual archaeology is a reaction to processual archaeology, in that its practitioners believe that by emphasizing decay processes, you ignore the essential humanity of people. Post-processualists argue that you can't really understand the past by studying the way it falls apart.

Prehistoric archaeology refers to studies of the remains of cultures that are primarily pre-urban and so, by definition, don't have contemporary economic and social records that can be consulted

Processual Archaeology is the study of process, that is to say, investigations of the way humans do things, and the way things decay.

Urban archaeology is, essentially, the study of cities. Archaeologists call a human settlement a city if it has more than 5,000 people, and if it has a centralized political structure, craft specialists, complex economies, and social stratification.