"It trains you to remove yourself from the flow of history, to look as an outsider and analyze," he says.

Most recently, Bar-Yosef has been working on a village estimated to be at least a million years old. He says he is trying to discover whether the first humans descended from one ancestor--the so-called "African Eve"--and migrated to the Middle East or whether they developed simutaneously in different regions.

In addition to sheding light on the origins of the species homo sapiens, archaeology is also unearthing clues about the development of complex societies.

David G. Mitten, Loeb professor of art and archaeology, has been excavating a Lydian and Greco-Roman site called Sardis in present-day Turkey.

"The high point of our work there was about 27 years ago when we found a huge Roman synagogue from about the third or fourth or fifth century A.D.," says Mitten.

Mitten has encountered several other "fantastic" finds in his excavations of the Hellenistic world. At the Sanctuary of Poseidon in Cypress, Greece, he and his colleagues discovered three anceint coins struck during the Persian Empire.

"We were surprised to find them there. Maybe they were gifts to the god and the temple or offerings of some kind. We are still not sure why they were there," says Mitten.

While Mitten researches the development of ancient Greek society, Lawrence E. Stager '65, Dorot professor of the archaeology of Israel, has been putting together clues about ancient seafaring cultures of the Near East.

Stager, who directs a dig in Ashkelon, Israel, theorizes that one of the series of cultures that lived in the city--Phoenicians, Persians, Egyptians or Greeks--was especially fond of dogs. So fond that the people carved out a prime piece of coastal property for a pet cemetery, he says.

"We now have over 300 dog burials that have been found. They are individually buried in pits--we don't find any offerings to them," he says. "They last for about 50 years. From about 500 to 450 B.C. they were buried extensively in this area. We still don't know who buried them or why they are there. Every year I come up with a different explanation."

Whether they are solving conundrums at the root of human history or painting a picture of ancient civilization, archaelogists agree that their work is often subject to the whims of chance. Scientists may spend years surveying land in search of a site or they may stumble upon entire buried cities while looking for small hunter-gatherer dwellings.

"One of the great things about archaeology is the sense of discovery. Most of it is fundamentally a series of clues. You rarely get the mesage delivered to you on a piece of table like Indy Jones," says Peabody Professor of American Archaeology and Ethnology Stephen Williams. "The sense of discovery keeps you going."

No avenue should be left unexplored, says Williams, who specializes in Native American cultures in the Southestern U.S. He has often discovered sites based solely on the myths and legends told to him by members of the community. On one dig several years ago, an old man kept nagging Williams, insisting that he knew of a valuable Native American site.

When the Harvard scholar finally acquiesced to the old man's wishes, just days before Williams left the excavation town, he practically stepped on bits of pottery. "When I went down [to the site] I picked up an arrowhead--now dated from about 6000 B.C.," he says.

Emily D.T. Vermeule, Zemurray and StoneRadcliffe professor, had a similar experience while exploring a Bronze Age site in Greece. "Some peasants came and said 'Want to see a nice tomb?' We all hopped on our horses and rode for two hours into the middle of nowhere. You couldn't see much [of the tomb] because the tomb had all collapsed," says Vermeule.