Bible Unearthed

The Impact of Archaeology

In the last session, we looked at the basics of what archaeology is and how excavation is done. But why even bother doing archaeology? All that research and excavation is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. So why is archaeology important? The basic answer is that archaeology provides us with a window into the past through objective evidence that you can see and touch. The people who write history ultimately get their information from archaeology, whether that be through new information about a rediscovered city, the translation of an ancient text, or artifacts that help us better understand a particular civilization or time period. Without archaeology, we would only know scraps of information about ancient civilizations, people, technologies, beliefs, and languages that have been handed down in books which happened to be preserved over the centuries.