Archaeology, or archeology (from Greek ἀρχαιολογία, archaiologia – ἀρχαῖος, arkhaios, "ancient"; and -λογία, -logia, "-logy"), is the study of human activity, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes (the archaeological record). Because archaeology employs a wide range of different procedures, it can be considered to be both a science and a humanity, and in the United States it is thought of as a branch of anthropology, although in Europe it is viewed as a separate discipline.

Archaeology studies human history from the development of the first stone tools in eastern Africa 3.4 million years ago up until recent decades. (Archaeology does not include the discipline of paleontology.) It is of most importance for learning about prehistoric societies, when there are no written records for historians to study, making up over 99% of total human history, from the Palaeolithic until the advent of literacy in any given society. Archaeology has various goals, which range from studying human evolution to cultural evolution and understanding culture history.

Michael A. Cremo (born July 15, 1948, Schenectady, New York), also known as Drutakarma Dasa, is an American Hindu creationist whose work argues that humans have lived on the earth for billions of years. Cremo's book, Forbidden Archeology, has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists, but has been criticized by many mainstream scholars for his unorthodox views on archeology. Scholars of the mainstream archaeological and paleoanthropological communities have described his work as pseudoscience. Cremo identifies himself as a "Vedic creationist."

Cremo's father, Salvatore Cremo, was a United States military intelligence officer. Michael Cremo lived with his family in Germany, where he went to high school. They spent several summers traveling throughout Europe. He attended George Washington University from 1966 to 1968, then served in the United States Navy.

Cremo is a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He has written several books and articles about Hindu spirituality under the name Drutakarma Dasa. He has also been a contributing editor to the magazine Back to Godhead and a bhakti yoga teacher. Cremo told Contemporary Authors that he decided to devote his life to Krishna in the early 1970s, after receiving a copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a Grateful Dead concert. In the end of 1990s he authored a paper on the official ISKCON statement on capital punishment. His work on "Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record" was published in ISKCON Communications Journal and Time and Archaeology.