Essay - Kennewick Man Archaeologists Reconstruct the Past. Prehistoric Archaeology Relies on...

Kennewick Man

Archaeologists reconstruct the past. Prehistoric archaeology relies on human cultural and biological remains to piece *****gether a puzzle. Patterns of human migrati*****, diet, culture, and ***** evolution can all be revealed through scientific analysis ***** prehistoric human remains. Scientific methods of data collection, analysis, and testing enable archaeologists to extract DNA from prehistoric remains and thereby glean information that could not ***** obtained ***** traditional means. As analytical and ***** ***** become more advanced, the vast collections of prehistoric human ***** that lie dormant in museum, university, and private collections can come alive. Archaeological studies can therefore benefit not only the scientific ***** academic communities but ***** also create paradigm shifts and enhance the body ***** common knowledge. Groundbreaking discoveries call into question previous historical *****s related to the earliest dates of settlement in a given region, or the evolution and migration ***** early hominids.

As ***** piece together the ***** through excavation, collection, and *****, human bones and related artifacts ***** are found near burial sites provide some of ***** most poignant evidence of prehist*****ic human civilization for several reasons. Genetic and physiological ***** can only be collected from the remains of human *****ings. Non-funerary artifacts ***** lend insight into prehistoric ethnography but not about ***** human physiology, biology, demographics, geography, or *****. Moreover, by definition, prehistoric remains predate the invention of writing and archaeologists need physical artifacts to tell s*****ries in the absence any written record.

Tracing patterns of ***** ***** can illustrate the courses that early humans took and perhaps lend ***** into why early ***** migrated. For example, the politically-charged skull of the Kennewick Man raised questions about the ***** inhabitants of the Americas ***** challenged commonly-held assumptions. Because of the challenges such tremendous findings pose, archaeology can be***** unwittingly political and unavoidably controversial. Those controversies become compounded at the interface between ***** ***** archaeology. The Native Ameri***** Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) is an example of how archaeology becomes political, and how ethnicity, culture, and history commingle.

Historians have ***** luxury of a written record to ***** together pieces of the past. Archaeologists have no such luxury and instead use more mundane evidence: such as ********** plant and seed remains; tools and other objects. When those objects express *****, as with a religious relic, ***** interfaces with anthropology ***** can yield insight ***** the lifestyles and possibly ***** worldviews of ***** humans. Few studies ***** be more relevant or meaningful than the investigation of ***** roots ***** humanity, which is why ***** remain dedicated to their profession.

Archaeologists in the United States and Canada work within ***** framework of North Ameri***** ***** and study the remains of early ***** on this c*****tinent. Because ***** America was colonized ***** foreign peoples five hundred years ago, the prehistoric ***** in the Americas are not the ancestors of most of its modern-day residents. ***** disconnection between the ancient ancestry of archaeological rema*****s and ***** modern society dwelling here now brings up a central issue in