Rediscovering the Past
|
The birth of archaeology
Lost cities and the birth of scientific archaeology
          
We found lost cultures, and learned how to understand the past.
Advances in geology showed the antiquity of the Earth, and of man upon it. Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) helped us to understand how to deduce the chronological relationship of artefacts, and inspired a search for origins. We learnt how cultures interacted with each other, and began to appreciate non-classical achievements and aesthetics. Petra instantly took a grip on the imagination, which it would never surrender.What archaeologists found did not always agree with what they had expected from classical and/or biblical sources. What did this mean for how each was to be understood? Archaeology even brought to light cultures long forgotten: the Minoans on Crete, the Nabataeans in Jordan. Fabled Troy would be located. Excavators at sites in the Arab and Ottoman world found new interpretative tools. British archaeologist Flinders Petrie was one such pioneer. He established the principles by which the objects produced by a culture could be arranged chronologically by comparing the changes in styles.
More about
The birth of archaeology  OverviewExploring the “East”Ancient voicesIn the shadow of the SphinxClassical archaeologyBiblical archaeologyIslamic archaeologyLost cities and the birth of scientific archaeology |
Jerash
Gerasa Prehistoric times- present; discovered in 1806 Jerash Governorate, Jordan The Roman city at Jerash (Jordan) was identified as the Decapolis town of Gerasa by German explorer Ulrich Jasper Seetzen on his journey from Damascus to Jerusalem in 1806. It is one of the better-preserved Greco-Roman provincial towns from the Roman/Byzantine period. The western part of the town was completely preserved and protected. It shows the layout of the city in detail. See Database entry for this item
Related 
|
||
|
|
/ Download
