Hello, I'm Dr. Hannah O'Regan,
from the Department of 
Classics and Archaeology
at the University of Nottingham.
And I'm an archaeologist.
I thought it might be useful to give
just a brief overview
of what archaeology is.
So you may have seen documentaries
on TV, and you might have thought
'that looks quite interesting', but
you've never studied it at
school and you don't really
know what it's about.
So I'm just going to briefly give
you an overview and give you
an idea of what it would be
like if you wanted
to study archaeology.
So what is archaeology?
Archaeology is effectively the study
of people in the past and the
remains they left behind.
So those remains,
could be buildings,
they could be pits,
they could be ditches
They could be artifacts,
they could be
the bones of the animals
that they were eating.
So it's the physical remains,
that people have left in the past.
And we study those and we can
learn about the lives
of, of those people.
Now, it's similar to
history in that we're learning
about people in the past.
But unlike history,
we're learning about
people who didn't necessarily
have a written record.
So, say for prehistory,
long before writing was invented,
we can study how people were living,
what they were doing, et cetera.
But from the historical
times onwards Yes,
we look at historical records.
We can also challenge them
because we can look at
the archaeological evidence that
we have in front of us and say,
okay, well, the historical
records tell us this.
The archaeological
records tell us that.
Say what's, you know,
where are the similarities
where are the differences.
And some of the really important
things that we can do with
archaeology is tell the stories of
the people for whom there
is no written record.
Could be those prehistoric people,
or it could be the women, the poor,
the people from ethnic minorities or
ethnic majorities depending on
where you are in the world.
Who were missed out of
the written accounts because
they're being written
by people for whom
those people are not important.
And so archaeology can give
those people back their stories.
And it covers a huge range
of time and geography.
So in our department, for example,
we've got colleagues who study
China and the archaeology
of the Silk Road.
We've got people who
study Southwest Asia.
We've got people who
study the Mediterranean
into Europe and then
up into Britain.
So we've got a massive
geographic range. I myself
study early human evolution
from South Africa.
So huge geographic range
also a massive time depth.
So we've got a time depth which
goes from, well, early humans,
early hominins as we
more correctly call
them, so back millions of years,
right the way up until the
Industrial Revolution.
So we've got a huge amount
of time to consider,
and a huge amount,
a huge area of
geography to consider.
And archaeology brings
all of that together to
tell the stories of
our shared human past.
The stories of people
wherever they were, and
what they were doing.
And also, a very important
point is how that's,
those stories impact on us
today and how sometimes
those stories of
the past are being used or misused
by people now in order to further
particular narratives.
So archaeology is current,
there's a real importance
and a currency to it,
particularly in terms of when
archaeology gets mixed
up with politics.
But there's also that story of
looking at how people have lived,
thrived, and survived
over the last millennia.
And, and that's archaeology.
