We have seen in the previous lessons, which were the critics of the New Archaeology toward traditional archaeology, and which were the innovative perspectives that the New Archaeology, wanted to open up and above all which were the ambitions of the New Archaeology for the future of the discipline. Such perspectives and ambitions can summarized as we have seen, in a methodological enrichment of archaeology, through contaminations with the other disciplines and in building the New Archaeology the same way as natural sciences are. To sum up, the main trends and the most relevant characters of contemporary archaeology, beyond a specificity, certainly important, of pre-historic archaeology and of the historical archaeologies, We can isolate some aspects which are fundamental today in any archaeological research. These aspects are typical of a contemporary global archaeology, we must say, were not, in several cases, ignored within the practice of historical archaeology before the 70’s, but were certainly considered only partially and sporadically and however not specifically and in an unitary way, as it is instead the rule in contemporary archaeology, strongly influenced by the most constructive critics of the New Archaeology. Thus, among those aspects, the following elements have particular importance in contemporary global archaeology: For example, the importance of interpretation compared to classification, with the aim of making the comprehension overcome description. Ever increasing sensitivity to economic and social issues also in the absence of written documents, due to the fact that significant socio-economic elements are present in the material culture. The systematic consideration of the environmental and ecological conditions as essential and conditioning components of the historical configurations of cultures. The primary attention to processual aspects of change, in the structural bases and in the superstructural elements, of the realizations of ancient communities. The adoption, in the methods of evaluation, of models of evolutionism, structuralism, anthropology to fill the gaps in the archaeological evidence and to build interpretations. The use of mathematical and statistical parameters for a rigorous and non approximate formalization of the evaluation on a basically objective bases. The trend of evaluating a systematic and structural, rather than fragmentary and occasional way each single evidence of the material culture emerging from the basic research. Integration of the data acquired from traditional research of excavations and surveys with archaeometrical analysis particularly but not only in bioarchaeology, with a particular attention to physical anthropology, zooarchaeology, and paleobotany. The use, especially for fundamental issue of chronology, of methods of the natural sciences, particularly physics and chemistry, with the aim of obtaining dates independent from, merely archaeological considerations. The application of properly scientific methods in the field of the Sciences of the Earth, of the new materials and of the Science of Constructions, for the preservation of artifacts, either architectural or artistic and material. The diffusion of informatics and digital methods for virtual reconstruction of environmental, architectural, artistic and material realities of the past. The commitment, above all through projecting and realizing archaeological parks, to preserve and to protect in the long term, in an integrated dimension, the remains of monuments and archaeological sites. The effort, through the so-called preventive archaeology, of record the archaeological importance of given areas in the perspective of possible damages deriving from the construction of modern infrastructures. Furthermore, within the recent developments of archaeology as a science of the past endowed now with an articulated theory of the research, the establishment of a new critical trend on the very same history of the subject and of a reflection on its characters in the past and present, as well as on the future perspectives, has made a new important research sector rise and flourish, and this one can be defined as history of archaeological thought. This relevant new branch of archaeology can be considered as a critical evolution of the history of archaeological discoveries and it is essential for modern archaeology to gain an even greater critical consciousness of every aspect, positive, negative, or problematic, of the theories and methods That they use in the past. The problematic aspects of the methods of current global archaeology are numerous, but, in very general terms, the main innovation of a contemporary archaeology which are fundamental for a modern research can be summarized in this way. First as an integrated view of the natural environment, and cultural reality, according to an objective interdependence, that is somewhat conditioning and that, however, should not become deterministic in the interpretation. A global research, based on a tight cooperation with all the disciplines that, among the natural sciences, offer substantive support in the integrated reconstruction of both the paleoenvironment and the ancient techniques, as well as the definition of chronology. The research of the structural aspects of cultural systems, in which, however, the focus are the dynamics of the historical developments, with a particular attention to changes, from which the term “Processual”, as the later definition of the New Archaeology derives. The adoption of mathematic and statistic parameters for rigorous formalizations in the representation of the dataset and the consideration of models deduced from other subjects methodologically flexible means of interpretation. The extreme attention paid to the preservation of movable and non-movable finds for the safeguard of both the artifacts and the landscape, also through preventive archaeology and the reconstruction of artifacts through virtual reality. The adoption of methods and theories of other branches of Humanities, and the comparison and cooperation with the natural sciences are two pillars of contemporary archaeological research and of the later phase of the archaeology derived from the seeds of the New Archaeology or Processual Archaeology, that the theorist of the archaeological thought call nowadays Post-Processual Archaeology. We would like to conclude this lesson, however, with the consideration of the many difficulties and issues, that we have already mentioned, of some of the critical trajectories which are much more followed within the newer trends of archaeology, even with blind trust. We would like to call the attention to the spread of models derived from the history of economy and sociology in archaeology, which are rightly considered as means of integrating, based on available evidence such as ethnology, the contingent gaps in the archaeological evidence, which is always partial and fragmentary. In fact, as we have said, if we want to go beyond the descriptive level of classification of traditional old archaeology, it has long been retained that it is enough to try to fill those gaps through the comparison with the similar cultural reality, which is still preserved, as for example the ethnological level in contemporary societies or historical level in the societies of the Middle Ages, with more complete dataset available, to get to know properly an ancient reality of the past, scarcely documented. This way, it is true that, in the study of the ancient world, it is possible to go beyond the step, preliminary and non-sufficient of classification because it is possible to interpret scarcely preserved evidence through other comparable sets of data, better preserved, on the ground of interpretation. Yet interpretation does not only imply comprehension, but the reality to be reconstructed is replaced with another reality, belonging to later times and better known, which is only allegedly at the same point in the social, economic, and ideological development as the reality of the past. Concluding in all those cases, comprehension is only illusory, because actually, it remains in the domain of simple generalization, through a correct one. In very general terms, this is a progress compared to simple classification of traditional old archaeology, but such progress, being a generalization, is actually a falsification, because historical realities are leveled and flattened in the framework of a reality often extremely generalized. The problem is that within generalizations, that nonetheless constitute a progress in knowledge, specificities are lost, or at least, they do not emerge. And to identify and reconstruct the specificity of a culture, are what make the true archaeological historical comprehension of an ancient culture possible.
