Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (600 page)

Reisner , George Andrew
(1867–1942)
[Bi].

American Egyptologist best known for his well-recorded excavations. Born in Indianapolis, he attended Harvard University to study law but soon transferred to study Semitic languages. He won a scholarship that allowed him to travel to Berlin, and here he met the Egyptologist Kurt Sethe who fired his interest in the topic. On returning to Harvard he took up a lectureship in the School of Semitic Languages. In 1897 he was invited to join an international team compiling a catalogue of material in the Cairo Museum, and from this time on he spent much of his time in Egypt. In 1910 he became curator of the Department of Egyptian Art at the Boston Museum, and by this time he had already started excavations in Egypt. He was a methodical excavator who prided himself on the records he kept. His early work focused on Qift, Deir el-Ballas, and Naga ed Deir. Later he worked at Giza to explore the enclosure of the Third Pyramid, his most sensational discovery being the burial of Queen Hetepheres , mother of Cheops . He directed an archaeological survey of Nubia in 1907 when the first Aswan Dam was raised, and from 1916 to 1923 he explored the pyramids of Meroe in the Sudan. He died in Cairo after suffering from increasing blindness over many years.
[Bio.:
American National Biography
, 18, 328–9]

 
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Determining the age of a specimen relative to its position in a stratigraphic or topological sequence based on the principles of superposition or artefact ordering.

 
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1
The claim that there is no knowledge independent of an individual, and that all knowledge is created within a cultural system. It therefore follows that there can be no absolute or independent means of judging between different knowledge claims, including science. However, such relativism is self-refuting since what it states about knowledge must equally apply to that claim itself. In contrast, a relativist position which stops with the argument that knowledge is constructed and is temporally and spatially located does not necessarily have these problems. Relativism is a charge often directed against post-processual archaeologists; it is a primary concern of the constructivist philosophy of science.
2
The belief that all accounts of the past are equally valid in their own terms, there being no neutral or objective way to judge between them.
3
The view that other cultures are no better or worse than any other, they are simply different.

 
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1
[Ar].
A personal memorial of a holy person, either a piece of clothing or some other item associated with a saint, or a part of the saint's body, preserved and revered as an inspiration to piety. Relics might be displayed to pilgrims, and were collected by them and kept safe in reliquaries (suitably shaped caskets), which were frequently ornately decorated. It was widely believed that spiritual value could be transmitted through the relics of a person who in life was blessed with miraculous powers. Accordingly, relics had an economic as well as a religious importance since important pieces would attract numerous pilgrims.
2
[Ge].
A synonym for the more technical term ‘artefact’.

 
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At its simplest such a landscape can be seen as a piece of natural or artificial scenery containing remains relating to a particular form, stage, or type of intellectual development or civilization which exists now in the same pattern or arrangement as in some previous age. In defining such areas such questions as the scale of what is represented and the integrity of the elements that survive need to be addressed.

 
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