Archaeometry

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The scientific approach that utilizes quantitative measurements to examine materials from past civilizations is known as a specialty in the study of ancient remains and objects
2. The field involving the use of scientific methods to date, analyze, and characterize archaeological artifacts and sites
3. A discipline that applies chemical, physical, and computational techniques to investigate ancient materials and cultural heritage

Etymology: Archaeometry is a modern scientific coinage, built from "archaeo-", the combining form of the Greek "archaios" meaning "ancient", and "-metry", from the Greek "metron" meaning "measure". The word therefore names the measuring of old things, though in practice it covers the application of physics, chemistry and other laboratory methods to objects from the past, such as dating pottery or identifying the source of a metal. The pairing is a useful reminder of how many modern scientific terms are assembled. Ancient Greeks had no word for this practice, since the techniques themselves were developed centuries later. Writers simply took classical building blocks and combined them to describe a new kind of investigation, the same method that produced terms like "biometry" and "geometry" in their own times.