Archaeology is a branch of anthropology and is very close to social anthropology and ethnology. In very simple terms, it could be said that archaeology is concerned with the historical reconstruction of human society. It tries to find out artifacts such as wheel, jug, axe, arrow, loin cloth, etc., which are made by humans. These findings are excavated.
For instance, the excavations of Harappan culture help us to reconstruct the history of Indian civilization. In America, several of the areas of archaeology are taken over by ethnology. The basic objective of archaeology is, therefore, to find out, as Kroeber says, what is old in society.
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Archaeology is basically prehistoric. It is specific to time. Admittedly, it is related to social anthropology but what is social anthropology in Britain is in reality ethnology. It focuses on finding out the old culture by excavation. Discussing the relationship between archaeology and social anthropology or ethnology, Evans-Pritchard writes:
Prehistoric archaeology is best regarded as a branch of ethnology. It attempts to reconstruct the history of peoples and cultures from human and cultural relations found by excavation in geological deposits.
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It also relies on circumstantial evidence and, like ethnology, can tell social anthropologists little about the ideas and institutions, in which they would be interested, of the peoples whose bones and artifacts it discovers and classifies.
What Evans-Pritchard has said boils down to the fact that archaeology learns about the culture of people by excavating the artifacts, and social anthropology links these with the prevalent culture and traditions of the primitive peoples?
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There is, thus, a reciprocal relationship between these two disciplines. In fact, they are complementary to one another.