One of my favorite aspects of astronomy is how close it is to a seemingly unrelated field of science.

Archaeology.

And I don't mean Indiana Jones archaeology where the hero runs around stealing precious cultural artifacts, but the real

modern archaeology that is slow, careful, deliberate, and is able to tell some the most

dramatic stories in human history. Take, for example, the city of Troy, long fabled,

Greek legend, et cetera, et cetera, and it turns out it's a real city.

It was discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870, which is a long complicated story, but that's for a different show entirely.

And there, literally sitting in the dirt, is thousands of years of history of a magnificent city that was built, destroyed by earthquake,

rebuilt, destroyed by fire, rebuilt, destroyed by war, rebuilt, suffered famine, enjoyed

centuries of prosperity.

The cycles continuing, you can read these stories.

We see the evidence for trade, for wealth, for power struggles, for armies,

for palaces, for families, for humanity.

And how archaeologists are able to tell these stories is worthy of an Ask a Dirtman

podcast in its own right.

It's from the tiniest of clues, evidence of a fire here, a fracture that can only come from

an earthquake over there, a pile of discarded pottery, an older style of stone reused in a newer

building, a seal with an inscription used by a scribe.

It's from these tiny clues that archaeologists are able to reconstruct the past,

giving us a window, a small, hazy, imperfect window, but a window nonetheless into the drama

of humanity stretching back thousands of years. And astronomy is like that. Yeah, our tools are different. Shovels and brushes aren't so handy in deep space. Our clues are different. Fewer pottery shards, more hydrogen atoms. Our space and time scales are different. We're talking millions of years, not thousands of years, but the basic philosophy, basic approach, the basic mindset is the same.

When we look out at the wider universe, we are surrounded by clues.

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