Archaeological regions| Rescue archaeology, Java man

Rescue archaeology

Rescue archaeology was a movement of the early 1970s, particularly in Britain which sought to lobby to help stop the loss of archaeological evidence, where it was threatened by building development work in the historic cities, and by agriculture. It is called Salvage archaeology in the United States.

The focus of early work was in setting up organisations that could undertake 'rescue' excavations in the teeth of the bulldozer. Archaeologists relied on the goodwill of the developer to provide the opportunity to record remains, and work was poorly funded through a mixture of government grants and donations. As a result, excavations were hurried and often unstructured. Later on the need to conserve archaeology in the ground has become more apparent.

In UK it has now been largely superseded by archaeology's incorporation into the planning process through the introduction of PPG 16 in 1990.

Diciplines by Regional study

African Archaeology Africa has the longest record of human activity of any part of the world and along with its geographical extent; it contains an enormous archaeological resource. Scholars have studied Egyptology for centuries but archaeologists have only paid serious attention to the rest of the continent in more recent times.
American Archaeology Archaeology of the Americas is the learning of the archaeology of North America, Central America (or Mesoamerica), South America and the Caribbean, which is to say, the pre-history and Pre-Columbian history of Native American peoples.
European Archaeology In terms of area, Europe is the world's second smallest continent, with an area of 10,400,000 km� (4,000,000 square miles), making it slightly larger than Australia.
Medival archaeology The period covers the commotion caused by the fall of the Medival archaeology Roman Empire and cultures such as the Vikings, Saxons and Franks.
Near Eastern Archaeology Near Eastern Archaeology is a wide generalised application, and is divided into further regional sub-branches, the archaeology of modern states in the region or along broad thematic lines.
Post Medieval Archaeology The Post Medieval Archaeology is considered as a bi-annual journal study of the material evidence of European society. This period saw the conversion of medieval to industrial society.
Modern Archaeology In contrast to the antiquarianism of classical archaeology, anthropological archaeology today is concerned with culture history (i.e., the chronology of events and cultural traditions) and the explanation of cultural processes.