ARCHEOL'OGY (Gr. archaios, ancient, and logos, a discourse) is the name now very generally given to the study which was formerly known as that of "antiquities." The term is well enough understood, although its meaning is not at all definitely fixed. In its widest sense, it includes the knowledge of the origin, language, religion, laws, institutions, literature, science, arts, manners, customs—everything, in a word, that can be learned of the ancient life and being of a people. When so used, it comprehends more or less of several branches of knowledge which are recognized as distinct or independent pursuits, suet', for example, as ethnology, philology, history, chronology, biography, mythology, nkimismatics. In its narrower but perhaps more popular signification, A. is understood to mean the discovery, preservation, collection, arrangement, authentication, publication, description, interpretation, or elucidation of the materials from which a knowledge of the ancient condition of a country is to be attained. These materials will be found to divide themselves into three great classes: (1.) written, (2.) monumental, and (3.) traditional. 1. What may be called written A., may be again subdivided into palaeography (q.v.), or diplomatios (q.v.)—that is, the science of ancient writings; and bibliograpny (q.v.), or the knowledge of printed books. 2. Monumental A. admits of almost endless subdivisions, according to the character of the remains to be studied, which may be works of art, such as buildings, sculptures, paintings, engravings, inscrip tions, coins, medals, seals, armorial-bearings, tapestry, furniture, plate, jewels, enamels, glass, porcelain, pottery; works of engineering, such as roads, canals, mines, piers, camps, forts, walls; works of unskilled labor, such as pillars of unliewn stone, caves, dikes, ditches, mounds of earth or stone: articles of dress, armor, or personal ornament; tools, weapons, implements, utensils, machines; appliances for locomotion, such as canoes, boats, ships, carriages; modes of sepulture, such as mummies, sarcophagi, urns, catacombs, graves; vestiges of man and animals, such as skulls, bones, skins. 3. Tradi tional A. includes as well the unwritten language and oral literature of a people, their dialects, legends, tales, proverbs, rhymes, songs, and ballads, as those sports, customs, ceremonies, rites, and superstitions now beginning to be known by the name of " folk lore." and formerly called "popular antiquities." The study of A. in modern Europe may be held to date from the revival of letters. It was was long almost exclusively confined to the antiquities of the Greeks and Romans. About the middle of the 16th c., mediaeval A., or the antiquities of the dark and middle ages, began to be cultivated. Egyptian A., or " Egyptology," as it is sometimes called, made comparatively little progress until the discovery of the Rosetta stone, containing a bilingual and triliteral inscription, which enabled Young in 1819, and Champollion in 1821, to find a key to the hieroglyphics. The more recent discoveries of Botta, Layard, Rawlinson, and others, have already advanced Assyrian A. to a point beyond all
expectation. Indian A. has been successfully prosecuted, especially during the last forty years, chiefly by officers of the East India company. Something also has been done by them and others for Chinese A. Men of letters in the United States have devoted their time to the rude and scanty remains of the aboriginal inhabitants of North America. The A. of Central and South America, as it attratted attention much earlier, so its more stately and instructive monuments have much better rewarded such investigations as those of lord Kingsborough, Messrs. Stephens and Catterwood, and others.
The study of A. has been largely promoted by the publication, at the expense of the state, in various countries, of the nation chronicles, charters, and records; by societies and clubs contributing to the same end, or printing essays on questions of A. ;•and by the establishment by the state, by associations, or by individuals, of museums for the collec tion and classification of antiquities. In England, a society for promoting the study of antiquity was founded so early as the year 1572. The irrational jealousy of tl6e govern ment dissolved it in 1604. It was revived in 1707, enlarged in 1717, and incorp`orated by royal charter in 1751, under the name of the " society of antiquaries of London." An attempt.to institute a similar society in Scotland was made about 1700 by "some honor able and knowing gentlemen," who resolved to continue their conferences till a complete historical account be made of the nation. But it was not until 1780 that the society of antiquaries of Scotland was incorporated by royal charter. The royal Irish academy for promoting "the study of science, polite literature, and antiquities," was chartered in 1786. The society of antiquaries of Scotland, and the royal Irish academy, have good museums of national antiquities. The British museum in London (established in 1733), besides'a great collection of early manuscripts and printed books, has galleries of Assy rian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Greek, Roman, British, and inedimval antiquities. One of the most remarkable collections of antiquities on the continent is that of the royal society of antiquaries of the north, at Copenhagen, arranged so as to illustrate a favorite theory of the Scandinavian arelimologists—that the primitive antiquities of a country may be assigned to three successive ages or periods of stone, bronze, and iron, with as much certainty and precision as the comparative antiquity of geological strata, or periods of the world's creation, may be determined by the fossils which they are found to contain. The museums of the Louvre and the Hffiel de Cluny, in Paris, contain fine collections of Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and an unrivaled collection of mediaeval antiquities. The royal museum at Naples has gathered together the statues, paintings, vases, household utensils, and other objects recovered during the last hundred years from the rains of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These long buried cities may be regarded as being in themselves museums of Roman A.