by Michael G. Lamoureux, March/April 2009
Introduction
Archaeologists of the last twenty years have had more tools and techniques at their disposal than earlier generations of archaeologists would ever have thought possible, due, in part, to the slew of technological and theoretical techniques developed during the modern golden age of archaeology that started in the 1960s with new absolute dating techniques and the "New Archaeology" of Lewis Binford and continued through the 1980s with the introduction of modern computational archaeology, remote sensing technologies, and the "Post Processual" archaeology of Ian Hodder. The introduction of thermoluminescence, potassium argon dating, and archaeomagnetic dating gave archaeologists new, and powerful, ways to calibrate dates for recent and ancient archaeological finds. The introduction of infrared, electromagnetic, satellite, and radar imaging allowed for remote and in-depth surveys of potential archaeological sites without even breaking the ground. Advances in computational archaeology allowed for unprecedented advances in numerical taxonomy and spatial analysis that provided new insights into old discoveries. And while Binford's "New Archaeology" cemented a scientific approach into the archaeological discipline, Hodder's "Post-Processual" archaeological approach insured that the importance of symbolic and contextual elements of an archaeological find did not go overlooked.
The last twenty years was a great time to be an archaeologist with the resulting mass-availability of a plethora of new technologies (that were developed in the golden age), the mass-acceptance of modern theories of archaeology, and the popularization of archaeology by the entertainment industry -- which gave us Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, Relic Hunter, and Jack Hunter. But what did the last twenty years give us in terms of new techniques and equipment? Underwater archaeology became common, but it can be traced back a good fifty years. UNESCO published "Underwater Archaeology; A Nascent Discipline" in Paris in 1972 and the Titanic was discovered by Robert Ballad back in 1985. Forensics, and DNA profiling, that allowed not only the gender but ethnicity of human remains to be identified, was developed in the mid 1980s. Digital imaging dates back to the 1960s when NASA launched the NIMBUS I and the first commercial electronic camera, the Sony Mavica, was available in 1981. The reality is that just about any piece of technology or equipment used by a modern archaeologist can be traced back to developments 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years ago. So what's new?
A survey of the discipline leads one to conclude that there were, arguably, only four major technological advances in the last twenty years. These were, in order, the introduction of the World Wide Web, STR (short tandem repeat) and the resultant application of DNA profiling to archaeology, the mass availability of high-resolution digital photography, and the application of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to archaeological finds.
The World Wide Web
In 1983, the U.S. Military portion of ARPANET, MILNET, was removed from ARPANET, which opened ARPANET up for wide-spread research use to any branch of the U.S. Government, NASA, the NSF (National Science Foundation), and the DOE (Department of Energy), which used ARPANET to collaborate in the development of a successor Wide Area Network based on TCP/IP. At the same time, CERN began the deployment of TCP/IP in its network, which was eventually opened up to outside networks in 1989. These efforts led to the formation and global adoption of the Internet in the mid-1980s and, more importantly, to the development of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners Lee in 1990 with his "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a Hypertext Project". This seemingly innocuous proposal by a little known computer scientist working as a contractor at CERN would go on to reshape research and industry over the globe over the next 20 years.
The introduction of the World Wide Web revolutionized archaeological research as it enabled communication with colleagues around the world, allowed for data, results, and papers to be immediately shared with colleagues an ocean away, and allowed leaders of the field to come together and collectively build knowledge bases that could benefit not only themselves, but their peers and students as well. It enabled distance learning, the quick location of relevant references and resources, and the location of peers with similar interests half a world away without having to rely on a chance encounter at a seminar or symposium.
DNA Analysis
In 1985, shortly after the development of the polymerase chain reaction by Kary Mullis in 1984, Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester in England reported his new DNA profiling technique. The original technique was based on restriction enzyme digestion and Southern blot analysis. It was a laborious process that required large amounts of undegraded DNA that looked at many mini-satellite loci simultaneously. This not only made it difficult to discern individual alleles (series of gene forms), but precluded parental testing. Once the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was introduced into profiling, the power of DNA testing was increased as PCR significantly amplifies the number of copies of a specific region for testing. This allowed for small samples to be tested using improved tests that were easier to use. In addition, standard assays (tests) for DNA typing could be developed and organized into databases such as CODIS.
However, it was not until the development of the short tandem repeat (STR) method of DNA profiling in the mid-90s that allowed for the widespread adoption of DNA profiling. Used by Clayton in 1995 for the identification of bodies from the scene of a mass disaster, it paved the way for DNA profiling in archaeological research as short tandem repeats not only allowed for the easy discrimination between unrelated individuals (as their highly polymorphic DNA regions will be different) but the identification of race by way of common markers.
High Resolution Digital Photography
Even though the first mega-pixel camera was developed by Kodak in 1986, it wasn't until the 1990s that high-resolution digital photography became widely available as the photo-CD system (developed by Kodak) was not developed until 1990, and the first professional digital camera system (building on the existing mega-pixel technology and the photo-CD system) was not commercially available (from Kodak) until 1991. High resolution digital photography was an important technological advancement for archaeology as it allowed archaeologists to not only take extensive photographic evidence of a site from many angles, but automatically upload the images into a (personal) computer which could not only combine overlapping images into larger images with the right photo-processing software, but, with modern technology also re-create 3-D replicas of the site using 3-D computer (assisted) tomography.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, is an imaging technique commonly used in radiology to visualize the structure and function of the body that uses a powerful magnetic field to align the nuclear magnetization of hydrogen atoms in the water contained in the body. Although the first MRI image was produced in 1973 by Lauterbur and the first study on a human performed back in 1977 by Dr. Raymond Damadian, Dr. Larry Minkoff, and Dr. Michael Goldsmith, MRI did not become part of the archaeologist's toolkit until very recently, likely due to the high cost and limited availability of the technology. One of the first applications, in 2006, was the scan of an unknown child mummy found in the vast Hawara cemetery (in Egypt). A more recent application was the scan of a 2000-year old peat-bog man that was chronicled in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2008.
Summary
Although the number of significant technological advancements in the last twenty years were rather few when compared with the significant number of advancements that were made in the 1960s through the 1980s, there were a few significant advances that moved the profession forward. The introduction of the World Wide Web allowed archaeologists to collaborate with their peers around the world and share data and results as soon as they became available. The development of the short tandem repeat technique enabled the widespread utilization of DNA profiling that allowed archaeologists to determine the gender and race of otherwise unidentifiable human remains. The mass availability of high-resolution digital photography allowed for unprecedented visual documentation of a site. And the application of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to archaeological finds allowed for the non-destructive investigation of delicate remains.