Biblical archaeology, for most people to whom the expression means anything, is almost exclusively associated with the Old Testament. There are several reasons for this. One is that the historical setting of the New Testament—the Graeco-Roman world of the first century A.D.—was well-known from the writings of classical authors of the period, and there was no need for archaeological research to recover the record of vanished civilizations such as form the historical setting of the greater part of the Old Testament narrative.