I used to be an archaeologist over 10 years ago now, and this has been slowing taking over the field since the 60's.
It used to be that we used to study the differences and traits of cultures that inhabited certain areas. For example in the British isles we would take the varying styles and designs in buildings, pottery and clothing, etc.. to give distinct names to the people of different eras and looking at the influences from elsewhere for changes in designs when they occured, we used to take it too far and before advancements in genetic research it was believed that wave upon wave of invasions or migrations would replace ethnic groups, e.g The beaker peoples, Celtic, Saxon and a viking Invasions, the first three of which have since been largely disproven.
This all focused on material remains so whenever something new or distinct appeared it was big news. Around the 60s there was a wave of theory know as 'New Archaeology' which I'm convinced was just a front for Communism taking over the field, which shifted away from great events, places, people in history and focused on the hidden lives of normal people, the interconnectivity of societies and so on. All of this wasnt a bad thing in theory for the field but the manner it was wielded meant that distinct finds would be destroyed or ignored, and inconvenient evidence contrary to 'New Archaeological' theory would be quietly shelved, and archaeologist who published contrarian opinions would lose all credibility.
It's one of the reasons I left the field, besides there being no money in it, was that it felt like a lot of private digs were setting out to prove a theory and fitting the evidence to suit it rather than letting the evidence and data points speak for themselves. I even saw entire periods or prehistory just refused to be investigated because it touched upon modern taboos, for example early human evolution and the genetic differences between races. A lot of evidence is starting to discredit the out of africa theory and instead suggest that humans evolved separately and differently globally from a far more distant ape relative than previously believed. Aboriginal peoples are essentially a completely different species to Western Caucasians, sharing wildly different genetics. They share a much closer genetic makeup to the denisovan hominins who were thought to have gone extinct around the time of the Neanderthals, where as Western Europeans can often share up to 20% of our genetics to Homo Neanderthalis which is none existent outside of Caucasians.
When this was all first discovered it was massive news and had articles with every Archaological magazine and national geographic etc... now it's been essentially memory holed and you have to seriously dig deep, ironically, online to find any articles on it
I used to be an archaeologist over 10 years ago now, and this has been slowing taking over the field since the 60's. It used to be that we used to study the differences and traits of cultures that inhabited certain areas. For example in the British isles we would take the varying styles and designs in buildings, pottery and clothing, etc.. to give distinct names to the people of different eras and looking at the influences from elsewhere for changes in designs when they occured, we used to take it too far and before advancements in genetic research it was believed that wave upon wave of invasions or migrations would replace ethnic groups, e.g The beaker peoples, Celtic, Saxon and a viking Invasions, the first three of which have since been largely disproven. This all focused on material remains so whenever something new or distinct appeared it was big news. Around the 60s there was a wave of theory know as 'New Archaeology' which I'm convinced was just a front for Communism taking over the field, which shifted away from great events, places, people in history and focused on the hidden lives of normal people, the interconnectivity of societies and so on. All of this wasnt a bad thing in theory for the field but the manner it was wielded meant that distinct finds would be destroyed or ignored, and inconvenient evidence contrary to 'New Archaeological' theory would be quietly shelved, and archaeologist who published contrarian opinions would lose all credibility.
It's one of the reasons I left the field, besides there being no money in it, was that it felt like a lot of private digs were setting out to prove a theory and fitting the evidence to suit it rather than letting the evidence and data points speak for themselves. I even saw entire periods or prehistory just refused to be investigated because it touched upon modern taboos, for example early human evolution and the genetic differences between races. A lot of evidence is starting to discredit the out of africa theory and instead suggest that humans evolved separately and differently globally from a far more distant ape relative than previously believed. Aboriginal peoples are essentially a completely different species to Western Caucasians, sharing wildly different genetics. They share a much closer genetic makeup to the denisovan hominins who were thought to have gone extinct around the time of the Neanderthals, where as Western Europeans can often share up to 20% of our genetics to Homo Neanderthalis which is none existent outside of Caucasians.
When this was all first discovered it was massive news and had articles with every Archaological magazine and national geographic etc... now it's been essentially memory holed and you have to seriously dig deep, ironically, online to find any articles on it