The Science Quiz | Unearthing the science of archaeology

Ruins of the stone Gates in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

Questions:

1. The term _____ reveals details about the composition and depositional environment of a rock, helping geologists interpret ancient landscapes and climate conditions by analysing the rock’s characteristics. Fill in the blank.

2. Name the robust archaeological technique predominantly used to map and detect subsurface features. It can’t be used very well in conductive soils like dense clay and salt marshes, where signal penetration and resolution are considerably reduced.

3. In archaeology, ________ ______ refers to determining the age of artefacts in relation to one another, using methods like seriation, which arranges items based on changes in style or frequency of different events over time. On the other hand, ________ ______ refers to determining a specific chronological age using techniques like radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology. Fill in the blanks.

4. What archaeological method — initially devised for geophysical studies, rooted in the principles of electricity, and explored by scientists in the late 16th century — measures how electrical currents interact with subsurface materials to locate and map buried structures?

5. What groundbreaking technology, which allows researchers to extract and sequence the genetic material from excavated ancient remains, was first successfully applied in archaeology to study Neanderthal fossils, significantly advancing our understanding of human evolution and ancient populations?

Visual:

Name this 17th century Danish scientist known for formulating the laws of stratigraphy, based on which he proposed that the earth’s crust evolved in a series of events over time. Credit: Public domain

Answers:

1. Facie

2. Ground-penetrating radar

3. Relative and absolute dating

4. Electrical resistivity tomography

5. Ancient DNA

Visual: Niels Stensen