Altertumswissenschaft: German word for the study of ancient culture and society. There is no equivalent in English.There is no real English equivalent for the German word Altertumswissenschaft, which refers to the study of ancient culture and society. It covers both…
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Dendrochronology: dating a wooden object on the basis of the growth rings of a tree. This is one of the most accurate ways to date an ancient object.
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Explanation: the process of relating facts to other facts and thus creating meaning.
Clio, the Muse of history
History may be one…
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First Law of Archaeology: ironical name for a tendency among archaeologists to explain things they do not understand as religious.
Qumran:…
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Maximalism and Minimalism: labels for two opinions about the relation between written evidence and archaeology, which sometimes are conflicting. The expressions are used when discussing the past of ancient Israel, but similar debates are known in Roman, Greek, and Iranian…
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Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903): German scholar, the great organizer of the study of Roman history.
Theodor Mommsen
Like that other great innovator of…
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Seriation: a method of relative dating, in which artifacts are chronologically arranged.
Seriation of Bronze Age axes
In archaeological excavations, the older…
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Terminus ante quem and terminus post quem: two expressions to indicate a relative chronology.Terminus ante quem simply means "moment before which X happened" and terminus post quem means "moment after which X happened". For example, if we know that the…
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Testis unus testis nullus ("one witness is no witness"): name of a problem that is created when historians have only one source - they cannot control the information and are forced to accept it.Historians have a lot in common with…
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Textual criticism: the study of medieval manuscripts in order to reconstruct ancient texts.
Fifteenth-century Byzantine Gospel manuscript, showing the prologue of…
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Battle of Marathon: famous clash between a Persian invasion force and an army of Athenians in 490 BCE. Its signicance is greatly exaggerated.
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