63 Quotes About Archaeology

Where can one buy a lit of that *Right Stuff* bravado required to shrug off the fact that your airplane is now a convertible?

Petra is a brilliant display of man's artistry in turning barren rock into a majestic wonder.

My father—who is a true scholar and not just a young lady with an ink pen and a series of things she has to say—puts it much better: “If we address stories as archaeological sites, and dust through their layers with meticulous care, we find at some level there is always a doorway. A dividing point between here and there, us and them, mundane and magical. It is at the moments when the doors open, when things flow between the worlds, that stories happen.

[...] the success of Egyptian surgery in setting broken bones is very fully demonstrated in the large number of well-joined fractures found in the ancient skeletons.

What's it mean; are you determinedTo make modern all mankind?If so, you should be be-sermonedAnd brought back to healthy mind.

They couldn’t turn back time. What was done, was done. He dropped his arms and lowered his head. Despondency filled him to the very brim. He was a dragon. A creature of magic and fire. A being that was lethal and dangerous. The Kings had forgotten that. All but one.

I have a habit of being an archaeologist of my own past, a sentimental collector of personal artefacts which may at first glance appear random, but each of which holds a unique significance. As the years pass me by, I find that the number of objects within my possession begins to accumulate. A torn map. A sealed letter. A boat full of paper animals. Each item encapsulates within itself a story, akin to an outward manifestation of my inner journey.

Until humans came and made anthills out of these mountains, Diwan Sahib was saying, looking up at the langurs, the land had belonged to these monkeys, and to barking deer, nilgai, tiger, barasingha, leopards, jackals, the great horned owl, and even to cheetahs and lions. The archaeology of the wilderness consisted of these lost animals, not of ruined walls, terracotta amulets, and potsherds.

Statements that will hold good for all time are difficult to obtain in archaeology. The most that can be done at any one time is to report on the current state of knowledge.