Oxford Companion to Archaeology

When we think of archaeology, most of us think first of its many spectacular finds: the legendary city of Troy, Tutankhamun''s golden tomb, the three-million-year-old footprints at Laetoli, the mile-high city at Machu Picchu, the cave paintings at Lascaux. But as marvelous as these discoveries are, the ultimate goal of archaeology, and of archaeologists, is something far more ambitious. Indeed, it...