Study of prehistoric archaeology

Historical archaeology examines that part of the human history which has recorded. While it shares many of the methods used in ancient archaeology, written documents provide an advantage in researching historical archaeology. Archaeology is not an anthropological discipline in Europe, but a historical one. This is because most civilizations have written languages in the Old World. However, archaeologists in the New World did not have this resource, save Mesoamerican archaeologists who studied Maya, whose hieroglyphic language has been decoded until lately. Due to this disparity, archaeologists in the New World have in many instances more common anthropologists than historians. A discipline of historical archaeology which examines the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, which include Greece and Rome, may be called classical archaeology. Egyptology may also be seen as an archaeological discipline of history. Historical archaeologists examine colonial sites in North America, such as Jamestown or Salem, and civil war sites such as the Gettysburg Battlefield..