I'm Nicholas Toth.
I'm a professor of archaeology
at Indiana University
and co-director of the Stone Age
Institute.
And archaeology is the study
of ancient people
and the world
that they lived in.
And archaeologists
do a lot of work.
They're digging,
they're looking for new sites,
they're exploring,
surveying over time.
And I got into archaeology
at a very early age.
I was about six years old.
And I had an uncle who had
a collection of spear points
and very similar to the one
I'm holding here.
And I was absolutely fascinated
by how were these things made,
who were the people
that made them, et cetera.
And I decided at that age
I was going to become
an archaeologist.
And when I was in high school,
I actually corresponded
with the famous anthropologist-
archaeologist Louis Leakey.
Louis and Mary Leakey
are famous for digging
at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania,
some of the earliest sites
in the world.
And much to my surprise, he
actually wrote back,
and that inspired me to go into
archaeology as a career.
And I studied
archaeology in Ohio
and then as a graduate student
at Oxford University
and the University
of California.
And archaeology
tends to be divided
into historical
archaeology where your...
you have written records
of the people
that were left behind
that can really help you
flesh out what their
world was like.
And then prehistoric
archaeology,
before the written record,
and that's the time period
I focus on,
especially the Stone Age.
The Stone Age occupies
over 99 percent
of the history
of human technology,
so it's a very important
aspect.
And we evolved from a very
small-brained animal
during that two-and-a-half
million years
to a very large-brained animal
as well,
so it's a real challenge.
And we interface with
a lot of other disciplines.
Geology, the geologists
who study the geological context
and how our sites became buried
and what kinds of evidence
about climate are left behind.
We deal with
primate paleontologists
who study the animal bones from
archaeological sites as well.
We deal with climatologists who
study climate change over time.
And so, these are some
of the types of disciplines
that we work very closely with.
The things I like
about archaeology,
it's an outdoor discipline,
you spend a lot of your time
outside hiking, looking
for new localities, and digging.
And digging is not easy either.
It's a very strenuous
activity you do but we love it.
And so there's
the field component,
and there's also
the laboratory component,
where you have to analyze
the materials that you've dug up
and make sense out of.
And we do a lot
of what's called
experimental
archaeology as well.
In our case, learning to
make and use stone tools
like our ancestors did.
And once you do that, you'll
learn to make stone tools.
In fact, I made this
stone tool here.
You get a much
better appreciation
for how our ancestors
were doing things
and being able
to identify patterns
that make sense in the
prehistoric record as well.
And the big questions
we're asking in archaeology,
one of them is what is
driving human evolution?
You get this
incredible expansion
in the brain,
human brain over time,
tripling in size in
two-and-a-half million years.
Why did that happen?
It probably has a lot
to do with selection
from more intelligent creatures,
but how much does technology
have to do with it?
How much does hunting
have to do with it?
How much does dealing with
larger social groups,
if they're group sizes
are getting larger over time,
have to do with it?
These are the types of things
that we're trying to tease out.
And the other thing is
what accounts for the changes
we see in the
archaeological record,
when people shift
from hunters and gatherers
to farmers or from farmers
to civilizations?
Why does that happen?
How much of it has to
do with climate change?
How much... how much of it
has to do with new ways
of exploiting your
resources, et cetera.
So, these are big questions
that archaeologists are asking.
So, if you're interested
in becoming an archaeologist,
I would advise you to visit
your local museums
and archaeological sites
in your area.
And also to volunteer.
Oftentimes, they will take
volunteers
on archaeological digs
and it's a great way
of getting firsthand experience.
That's how... that's how I
started as an undergraduate
in college, volunteering to work
on archaeological projects.
