Archaeology

Vocabulary:

1. Archaeologist - A specialist in archaeology, the scientific study of prehistoric peoples and their cultures by analysis of the things they left behind.

2. Artifact - A handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, especially such an object found at an archaeological excavation.

3. Paleontologist - A specialist on the science of the forms of ancient life as represented by their fossils.

4. Survey - A site found by archaeologists to contain historic artifacts.

5. Excavate - to expose or lay bare by digging; unearth: to excavate an ancient city.

6. Ruins - The remains of a building, city, etc., that has been destroyed or that is in disrepair or a state of decay: We visited the ruins of ancient Greece.

7. Grids - A basic system of reference lines for a region, consisting of straight lines intersecting at right angles.

8. Screen - A tool used by archaeologists to sift through dirt from an excavation to find artifacts.

9. Hypothesis - An assumption or guess as to how an artifact might have been used.

10. Theory - A group of tested general hypotheses, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as an explanation of something.