Archaeology Quotes

• As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end.

  Michel Foucault

  Men, Invention, Ends

  The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences ch. 10 (1966)

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• History may be accurate. But archaeology is precise.

  Doug Scott

  May, Accurate, Precise

  "Organized hunts for Civil War relics raise dust between participants, historians" by Brigid Schulte, www.sfgate.com. April 30, 2006.

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• Archaeology is not only the hand maid of history, it is also the conservator of art.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Art, Hands, Maids

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• Archaeology is not a science, it's a vendetta.

  Mortimer Wheeler

  Science, Vendetta, Accounts

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• We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology.

  Michael Rostovtzeff

  Writing, Helping, Learning How To Write

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• An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.

  Agatha Christie

  Love, Funny, Birthday

  Attributed in Bennett Cerf, The Life of the Party (1956)

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• The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

  Robert Ballard

  Educational, Discovery, Exploration

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• Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall. ... So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and "X" never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.

  Jeffrey Boam

  Philosophy, Reading, Philosophical

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• Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

  Jim Bishop

  Men, Who Cares, Want

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• The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development.

  Margaret Murray

  Religious, Race, Views

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• In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

  Thomas R. Pickering

  Diplomats, Favourite, Diplomacy

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• I'm not a historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

  Penelope Lively

  Science, Past, Aspect

  "I'm not a historian but I can get obsessively interested in the past". Interview with Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. August 26, 2001.

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• Archaeology is the study of humanity itself, and unless that attitude towards the subject is kept in mind archaeology will be overwhelmed by impossible theories or a welter of flint chips.

  Margaret Murray

  Attitude, Humanity, Mind

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• It's very important to reveal the mystery of the pyramid. Science in archaeology is very important. People all over the world are waiting to solve this mystery.

  Zahi Hawass

  Pyramids, People, Waiting

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• Archaeology is the only branch of Anthropology where we kill our informants in the process of studying them.

  Kent V. Flannery

  Branches, Study, Process

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• Science fiction is a kind of archaeology of the future.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Art, Fiction, Entertainment

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• The limitations of archaeology are galling. It collects phenomena, but hardly ever can isolate them so as to interpret scientifically; it can frame any number of hypotheses, but rarely, if ever, scientifically prove.

  David George Hogarth

  Science, Numbers, Hypothesis

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• As a writer, one is busy with archaeology.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Busy

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• I am convinced that the stratigraphic method will in the future enable archaeology to throw far more light on the history of American culture than it has done in the past.

  Edward Sapir

  Past, Light, Culture

  Edward Sapir, David Goodman Mandelbaum (1985). “Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality”, p.398, Univ of California Press

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• Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

  Jean M. Auel

  Journey, Space, Ships

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• There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament tradition.

  William F. Albright

  Doubt, Tradition, Old Testament

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• All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

  T. E. Lawrence

  Inspirational, Success, Dream

  The Seven Pillars of Wisdom suppressed introductory chapter (1926).

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• Biblical archaeology was developed early in this century in an effort to substantiate the authenticity of the Biblical account. It's by now generally recognized in Biblical scholarship that it has done the opposite. The Bible is not a historical text, and has only vague resemblances to what took place, as far as can be reconstructed. For example, whether Israel ever existed is not clear; if so, it was probably a small kingdom somewhere in the hills, apparently virtually unknown to the Egyptians.

  Noam Chomsky

  Biblical, Israel, Opposites

  Source: chomsky.info

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• In a simple direct sense, archaeology is a science that must be lived, must be "seasoned with humanity." Dead archaeology is the driest dust that blows.

  Mortimer Wheeler

  Blow, Simple, Dust

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• One of the things that I love to do is travel around the world and look at archaeological sites. Because archaeology gives us an opportunity to study past civilizations, and see where they succeeded and where they failed. Use science to, you know, work backwards and say, 'Well, really, what were they thinking?'

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Past, Opportunity, Thinking

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