ABSTRACT
Archaeology is defined in The Random House Dictionary of the English Language as 'the scientific study of historic and prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of their artifacts, inscriptions, monuments and other remains, especially those that have been excavated'. Archaeologists have problems different from others who analyze material culture. Archaeological theory offers different perspectives on how to think about the ancient objects. The perceived deficiencies of the culture history approach led a number of archaeologists in a different direction and to the development in the 1960s of what is called processual archaeology. Post-processual archaeologists highlighted the limits of archaeology as a science, showed the limits about what we know about the past, and highlighted how multiple interpretations are possible from the same object depending on the viewpoint of the observer. Cognitive archaeologists, are interested in the way humans use symbols and in the social relations that are needed for them to use symbols and communicate with one another.
