Archaeology is a science, not in the Aristotelian sense of cognitio certa per causas but in the modern sense of systematic knowledge.[1] Vicente Vilar expands on this point by stating that archaeology is both art and science: as an art it searches for the material remains of ancient civilizations and tries to reconstruct, as far as possible, the environment and the organizations of one or of many historical epochs;[1] as a relatively recent modern science, and as Benesch has said, it is a science that is barely 200 years old but that has, however, substantially changed our ideas about the past.[2]