The beginnings of geosciences in the spanish archaeology

Abstract

During the second half of the 20th century, Archeology went into a revolutionary process. The implementation of new methodologies, involving the application of new techniques from the field of Natural Sciences, allowed an improvement which turned archeology into a both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary field. This setting leads to a situation in which, at the present time, it is expected that all “serious” works in archeology are supported by data provided in other disciplines, such as Archaeobiology, Geoarchaeology, Archaeological Studies or isotope dating. Despite the fact that this interdisciplinarity is currently and widely accepted in Universities and research centers all across Spain, this account of Archeology is still considered as quite modern—we can go back to the 19th century to know the beginnings of this interaction. This work presents a brief compilation of the most representative researchers in the world of the Geosciences that shaped Archeology. It is focused in the study of Prehistory in Spain, and it shows that the personal divergences among the main researchers on the field lead to a split between the studies on Archeology and Prehistory, which fortunately was latterly solved.