I fail to see how it can be considered a field of study. Is it in being able to date things that makes it acceptable? Anybody can dig up some bones from 4,500 years ago.
Anthropology went off the rails with Margaret Mead and her mentor/girlfriend and their paleolib protofeminist claptrap. It hasn't been the same since. I'll bet there isn't 1 in 10 anthropologists today that doesn't have, or wish they had, a shrine to her in their offices.
I'm proof of that. I have mastadon bones...10,000 years +
Is ah now an anthropolollolologist?