Archaeologists find sites through surveying areas on foot, using aerial photography, and GIS systems. They look for soil marks, mounds, and changes in vegetation that could indicate artifacts or features of past human activity. During excavation, they carefully document contextual information about artifacts, features, ecofacts, and the soil matrix to reconstruct past human life at a site. After excavation, artifacts are analyzed, data is shared through publications and conferences to draw conclusions about past human subsistence strategies, social organization, and other aspects of life.

1. How we know about the human past

2. HOW DO
ARCHAEOLOGIS
TS FIND SITES?
 Survey (phase I)
 the physical examination of a
geographical region in which
promising sites are most likely to be
found
 By walking
 Taking aerial photographs
 Using Geographical Information
systems (GIS)
 Looking for:
 Soil marks
 Mounds
 Change in vegetation
 Eroded or tilled artifacts

3. Artifacts:
objects that have
been deliberately
and intelligently
shaped by human
or near human
activity
Features:
nonportable
remnants from
the past (house
walls or ditches)
Ecofacts:
plant residues or
animal remains
related to human
activity
Matrix:
the type of earth
we encounter
(Munsell color
system)
Provenience:
the precise 3
dimensional
position of
objects
Context:
the relationship
between all of
these things
NOTE: Archaeologist are NOT looking for fossils…that’s Paleoanthropology!

4. • Bones
• Ceramics
• Beads
• Hunting/fishing tools
• Blades/arrows
• Nets
• Weights
• Textiles
• Jewelry
• Figurines
• Tools
• Crafted metals
• Trade goodsAnything modified by human culture

5.  Hearth (fire pit/oven)
 Structure walls
 Midden (trash pit)
 Buried objects/people
 Roads
Non-portable remains from human activity

6. • Pollen
• Seeds
• Chemicals in the soil
• Charcoal
• Animal bone
• Plant “fingerprints”
(phytoliths)
Biological objects found in association with
an archaeological site

7. They type of surrounding soil, which tells
us about cultural, chemical, and
environmental changes

8.  CONTEXT – the relationship of
recovered materials to other artifacts,
features, and geological information at a
site
 PROVENIENCE –the vertical and
horizontal positioning of objects for 3D
mapping and analysis

9.  Site sampling (phase II)
 Give the site a reference number/name
 Locate it using G.P.S.
 Draw a Map of the site
 Locate it using a total station
 Excavation (phase III)
 Remove strata of earth to see matrix
 Can be done using arbitrary (i.e. 10 cm per layer) or
natural layers (following the natural stratigraphy of
the soil).

10.  All data must be collected carefully
 In order to reconstruct the site, each level of
excavation needs to be documented
accurately
 Scaled plan maps (for each level)
 Photos (of everything!)
 Bagged and numbered artifacts
 Detailed description of the soil matrix

11. WHAT’S
NEXT?
 Process data
 Clean, count, sort, and photograph artifacts
(ceramics, lithics, shell, bone, etc.)
 Store objects accordingly
 All information is transferred to paper or
digitized for future use
 Analyze the data
 Perform statistical analyses
 Compare with previous research to draw
conclusions
 Share data
 Publish articles
 Present findings at conferences

12. What biases
do we have
as the
interpreter?
Our own values, traditions, and beliefs
What social
aspects of
life can be
recreated?
Beliefs, traditions, and ways of life
What can
the evidence
tell us?
Subsistence strategies, group
organization, building strategies, diets,
gender roles, patterns of activity, etc.

13. Archaeology as a tool for civic
engagement
Public outreach and education
Inclusion of native peoples in research
Cultural Resource Management
(CRM)
Used to save archaeological sites from being
destroyed by new roads or buildings (employs
most archaeologists in America)

14.  The study of archaeological sites associated with
written records
 Use of ethno-historic accounts (speaking with
those currently living within the culture)
 Anything older than 50 years can be considered
an archaeological site

15.  The study of archaeological sites
associated BEFORE written records
 People living this time were advanced in
their own right
 No association to “primitive life” or
inferiority because of the lack of written
records
 Many pre-historic groups kept records of
their own, just not “written”
 Example: the quipu knot system of the Incas
in Peru (photo top right)

16. Relative dating:
Produces a time range using the
relationship among a series of
remains that fit within a
geologic (and thus chronological)
order
01
Absolute dating:
provides an actual date using
chemistry and physics
02

17. • Uses the same location and recovery
methods as Archaeology
• Different than Archaeology because of
its focus on evolutionary history
• Although both can be prehistoric
in nature, paleoanthropologists
are working within a much earlier
time frame
The study of biological changes
through time (evolution) to understand
the origins and predecessors of the
present human species

18. The scientific study of the geologic past
based on the examination of fossil remains
(aka dinosaurs)