Essay: A Series of Small Walls

Humans have always been fascinated by what came before them, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the study of archaeology. As early as the late Middle Ages or early Renaissance, historians and other antiquarians examined the cultural remains of previous civilizations, particularly those of the Greeks and Romans, and attempted to understand what they saw. By the seventeenth or eighteenth century, tentative steps had been taken in the direction of making the study of the past based on the artifactual record more scientific.[1]

By the nineteenth century, the field of archaeology was dominated by male scholars from upper class backgrounds. Many of these men were looking for artifacts of great monetary value: "The history of excavation began with a crude search for treasure and...

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