ARCHAEOLOGICAL, HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC SOURCES - INTERDISCIPLINARITY OF STUDIES OF THE PAST

Reconstructing the past is a complex and complicated pursuit, as well as an extremely creative and interesting process, which involves cooperation between different scientific disciplines. Acknowledging and reconstructing the past, once narrowed down chiefly to archaeology, anthropology and history, is now carried out with at least partial involvement of other disciplines, such as humanities and social sciences, natural sciences, mathematics and technical sciences. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity of research can produce a broader knowledge of past worlds and cultures, and how these cultures were created and functioned in different environments. Nowadays, it seems obvious that the proper understanding of the past is possible not only due to study of material culture and written sources, but also (among the other things and sciences) analyzing of natural environment, relying on ethnographic analogies, applying anthropological and philosophy theory, and even mathematics and computer models. Interdisciplinarity of studies of the past involves also closer and stronger collaboration between scientists from various disciplines, especially history, anthropology, and archaeology. These three scientific disciplines are probably the most vitally interested in the process of reconstructing the human culture in different ways.