Throughout history people have had a curiosity in and speculated about the past.
Archaeology is one technique of recovering the past.
Unlike other social sciences, prehistoric archaeology cannot observe the behavior of the people it is studying, nor does it have access to written documents. Instead, archaeology must make conclusions about the past based on material and physical remains. I place this statement in the past tense because I do believe that conditions and attitudes in archaeology have changed. The foci and directions of archaeology have been largely determined by influences such as cultural, economic, political, and social factors. In this paper I will examine the form and the content of North American archaeology in historical context from its beginnings until the early 20th century.