| Summary: | If one believes the box-office, the most famous archaeologist is of course, Indiana Jones, hero of the famous eponymous films. This screen adventurer has certainly brought glory to the work of archaeologists, but his adventures do not give a very realistic image of the trade! If archaeology remains an adventure, it is certainly calmer than those lived by the character brought to life by Steven Spielberg. It is an adventure which, though it begins in the field, continues in laboratories and in libraries. The word 'archaeology' comes from the Greek 'arkhaios = old' and 'logos = science'; archaeology is thus the science of ancient things. A science which thanks to the unearthing of the material remains of the past makes it possible to comprehend man's activities, social behavior and environment since the dawn of time. It involves numerous fields of investigation and thus demands a multiplicity of specializations. From the botanist to the specialist of petrified objects, from the cartographer to the anthropologist, from the physicist in charge of carbon-14 dating to the zoologist, from the excavator to the ceramics expert, all attempt to fulfill the same objective: "To decipher our past in order to better understand our present while trying to anticipate our future."
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