Question

Compare and contrast how archaeologists and paleoanthropologists date their discoveries.

Answer 1

Paleoanthropology is the sub field of Anthropology where the focus is on the study of the human body and tracing the evolvolution of society and culture through a systematic digging or excavation of the human remains. The focus in this field is on questions as wide as how the homospaien emerged from Neanderthal to to how we contract diseases. They mainly rely on evidence in the form of artifacts, fossilized bones of the human ancestors, and the geographical contexts in which these archaeological specimens are found.

Archaeology on the other hand is a field of history which involves the study and the technique of excavating the material remains of the past in order to describe and understand human life in the different periods of time. Archaeologists thus try to piece out human life though objects ranging from cooking tools to a complex hunting contraption.

While both Paleoanthropology and Archaeology rely on the technique of excavating and determining the time period to which the artifacts belong, they differ in their approach to the material remains. Thus, a Paleoanthropologist is motivated to determine the date of the fossils in order to get sufficient clues and clarity about the way human beings lived in the past. In contrast, Archaeology adopts a method which focuses on understanding the time period or the past itself through these objects.