this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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That ain't perfume! Ancient bottle contained feces, likely used for medicine (m.kuow.org)
submitted 3 days ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/archaeology@mander.xyz
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Now, in research published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers describe chemical evidence of a medicinal recipe penned more than 2 millennia ago by Galen, the famous Greek physician of ancient Rome. It involves a blend of human feces and fragrance. Such an arresting combination mirrored Galen's instructions for masking the odors of certain foul-smelling medicines.

"It was a remarkable moment of interdisciplinary work," says Rana Çelebi, a medical historian at Istanbul Medipol University who contributed to the research, "to produce a uniquely tangible window into the ancient medical practice."

Medicinal poop isn't just a thing of the past. Some modern physicians have started using it as a kind of gut microbiome reset for those struggling with a debilitating kind of GI infection caused by the bacterium Clostridium difficile, and are researching it for other uses. Rather than mixing it with aromatics to make it more palatabl

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