Time Detectives : How Archaeologists Use Technology to Recapture the Past

London: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Hard Back. Very Good/Very Good. 6 1/4" X 9 1/2. 288 Pages Indexed. Red boards with green quarter-spine and gold spine lettering. Advances in technology have moved archeology into a new age. Yesterday's solitary romantic adventurers are today's teams of sophisticated, multidisciplinary scientists capable of studying ancient diets from bone collagen and reconstructing millennia-old landscapes from fossilized seeds and grains. Excavations today move less earth in two years than those of a couple of generations ago moved in a month - and they learn vastly more about how our ancestors lived. This book reports on some of the breathtaking finds of recent years: the earliest Bronze Age shipwreck ever discovered, the site of a Native American bison hunt, ancient farming systems used in the Andean highlands by Inca farmers before the Spanish conquest, when reintroduced today, produce higher crop yields than current methods, a newly discovered Mayan city, excavated gardens of 18th-century Annapolis and a compelling view of white and black life in colonial America. Archeologists today head teams of experts who know how to use infrared photography to decipher Roman documents etched on wood, and entomologists whose knowledge of beetles makes it possible to deduce the uses of a wooden site in Bronze Age England. Time Detectives not only recapture our past, they help us to understand human experience through the ages. Contents in Three parts: Hunters and Gatherers, Farmers, and Civilizations.