What's archaeology (for me)?

So.
What is archaeology?
Do we need to define it at all?
Didn't someone say it somewhere already?

While there are some definitions, which you can find in vocabularies and the like, none can be deemed 'official'. There's no 'central authority of archaeology' or whatsoever -and I dare say luckily so.

On the other hand, I challenge anyone to provide an unambiguous, comprehensive, while also concise description of archaeology, without it being too simplistic. As for most things, there's no such a neat definition which avoids to flatten the complexity of the 'real thing', and archaeology makes no exception.
This difficulty is not for non-expert people only, in fact it is regularly object of debate[no you're not mad and the link isn't broken, citation needed here, I just didn't add it yet LOL] among the practitioners and theorists themselves, without ultimately reaching an unanimous consensus about what archaeologists study and do.

If on one hand this can be a symptom of a healthy scientific discipline, as no things are taken for granted and possibly (not always tho) continuously negotiated, on the other hand it needs us to state what we're talking about every and each time.

This is also why I'd like to provide my own way to conceive this discipline, as it will be the standpoint for further contents on this topic, keeping in mind that even my personal idea changed and will change over time.

So: what is archaeology for me?

My definition(s) of archaeology

What now? More than one?
Long story short: yes.

I just feel it's better to provide multiple perspective rather than one unique view, because it's something made of different layers (like onions, and orcs yes, and humans of that matter), and this is already an archaeological approach.

The barebone one

Technically -and materially I would add- speaking:

archaeology tries to reconstruct human history through the study of material human-made evidence, mostly based on a stratigraphic method, analysing their spatial and chronological relations in their contexts.

So it's not much about objects as much more about the dirt they're in, the relations between earth layers, and what stories they can tell us.
If we were all on this page, we would already be light years apart from sadly popular if toxic misconceptions of archaeology, forcing professionals to justify why they're not Indiana Jones and explain over and over that we definitely don't dig dinosaurs (those are paleontologists!).

In a way, the idea(l) of Indiana Jones is part of archaeology, and I'm among those who'd rather not draw such strict lines between sister disciplines and their concurrent role in building narratives.
But that's part of a broader discourse which I'm introducing with the next personal definition.

The reflexive one

Now for the part I like most...
Extended, more exhaustive, taking less for granted while leaving space for meaningful interpretations.

Archaeology is a knowledge research field developed as a scientific discipline in Europe and North America mostly after 1800 Christian Era (or circa the Contemporary Age or the Industrial Revolution). Archaeologists create narratives about the history of the world from the point of view of humanity, by trying to reconstruct stories in the present about the past, through every detectable relations between human-influenced contexts, interpreting the roles humans had into their making.

Now first, what's with all the preamble about EU, NA and CE? Is this academic jargon?
Partially, yes, though I promise it makes sense and I'm explaining myself at best.

As this definition takes into account what I comprehensively consider archaeology to be, while keeping it as short as possible, I had to write like that. Just consider I wrote an entire chapter of my thesis about the origins and implications of the discipline being born in so-called Western-coutries in the last two centuries: the take-home point is that we shouldn't forget the legacy of such a fact, while also recognise that the subject -archaeology in this case but that works for people too- can also be a much different thing than its parents and birthplace.
Namely, the discipline itself has two different origins in Europe and North America, respectively as a child of History (of Art) in EU and a branch of Anthropology in NA. Nonetheless, the two continued their processes influencing each other, and ultimately (tho still limited) started to be positively contaminated by non-Western ways of researching knowledge as all (Western-originated) scientific disciplines at large.

So much for the preamble.
Wanna know about the rest? Be my guest.

...but not yet, I need more time to elaborate on this, please go back to this blogpost on a later date! ;D

Also this is the way of conceiving the discipline which -in my opinion- gives it more space to breath, expand its topics of interests, and fruitfully encounter with wider areas of knowledge and experience.
Simply put, this is what allows my imposter syndrome to still wanting to share my thoughts about such an academic research field colliding with any popular narrative medias (such us -but not limited to- books, movies, comics, animations and videogames).

Archaeology for me

Now for an extra definition, as it really isn't one, but I felt like I could share some more at this point.
So: what is archaeology for me in my daily and lifetime experience?

Outside of the realms of academic intellectualization and far from the need of clarity for the sake of communication, this discipline represents a dream and a possible career path at the moment, a broken promise and part of my cultural background as well as a nice tool to make use of.

As I wrote before, its methods can be useful far from their meant playgrounds and I apply them full hands (even too much maybe?), while the original expectations I had for it fall short in front of the actual implementations into society.

All in all, archaeology is still a process for me, and after all I hope it will continue to accompany me throughout my life whether I part ways with its regular applications or not.