Archaeology is the study of people in the past based on their material remains.
This means that most archaeologists look at the rubbish and ruins which people discarded, or the objects and people which they deliberately buried. The discovery of information about people's lives in the past is much more rewarding and exciting to most professionals. Archaeology, as studied today, is about the mundane and the everyday, although sometimes spectacular finds are made and it is these which capture the media's attention. Within the subject, it is not the objects which are important, but the information which they provide. Most people think that archaeology is about history, but archaeologists are not historians.