This document discusses the analysis and interpretation of archaeological artifacts. It defines an artifact as any object made or modified by humans. Archaeologists examine the primary context of artifacts, including the surrounding matrix and their horizontal and vertical positions. Formation processes, both cultural and natural, help explain how objects became buried. Dating artifacts can involve spot dating during excavation or post-excavation methods like absolute or relative dating. The document traces the history of how archaeologists have approached and interpreted artifacts, from classifying cultures based on material traits to more nuanced social archaeological approaches that aim to reconstruct past societies.

1. Archaeologists and Objects
Urban Archaeology
Session 7

2. What is an artefact?
“any portable object used, made or modified by
humans.”
- Renfrew and Bahn, 2001
• Artefacts and Ecofacts

3. Primary Context of Artefacts
• Matrix – what is around the object (usually
sediment)
• Provenance – the horizontal and vertical
position of the object in the matrix
• Principle of Association – other finds that the
object is associated with (usually in the same
matrix)
• If something has been moved, it can be in a
secondary context.

4. Formation Processes
How archaeologists understand how something
has come to be buried:
• Cultural Formation Processes
– Deliberate/accidental human behaviours that lead
to the burial of an object
• Non-cultural / Natural Formation Processes
– Natural events that lead to the burial of an object
- Renfrew & Bahn, 2001: 52

5. Objects in the Urban Landscape
But what about when the object is not where
people left it?
• Processes of moving objects
• Variety of primary contexts / secondary
contexts – It is not always in an excavation
context
– e.g. looking in the attic, a wall cavity, digging a
new bed in the garden.

6. Dating Objects
• Spot Dating (during excavation)
• Post-excavation dating
• Absolute Dating
– computed numerical date
• Relative Dating
– order of events
– Stratigraphic Dating
• Terminus Post Quem / Terminus Ante Quem
• ‘Limit (Date) after which’ / ‘Date before which’

7. Harris Matrix

8. Archaeologists & Objects:
A History

9. History of thinking about objects
1950s
• “The archaeologist is digging up, not things, but
people” – Wheeler, 1954: 13
• Childe developed the idea of cultures, which
represented peoples/societies and associated
material culture traits in the same time and place
– Childe, 1956: 3
• Classify things then look for connections between
entities. i.e. “diffusion of ideas, migration,
invasion or internal innovation” – Shanks and
Tilley, 1992: 117

10. History of thinking about objects
1970s
• Renfrew (1978) questions classification. Cultures are
arbitrary.
• Shennan (1978) looked at locations and variability of
Beaker finds to challenge the idea of a coherent
cultural tradition.
• Binford (1972) criticized the definition of artefacts as
expressions of social norms specific to distinct groups.
He argued there were not distinct cultures and
interactions between those cultures, but there were
culture systems that were adaptive and this explains
where there is variability in the archaeological record.

11. Normative vs. Social Archaeology
1970-80s
• Normative Archaeology could not tell us
anything about non-material things in society
such as religion, beliefs or politics
• Social Archaeology can tell us what the
relationship between society and environment
is, with material culture as the mediator. This
led to attempts to reconstruct past societies
using schemes of social evolution, often based
on analysis of existing societies.

12. Social Archaeology might not work
1980s
• Tilley (1981) and Hodder (1982) questioned
this approach.
• The issue is that this approach relies on being
able to explain a social element by referring to
the part that something plays in maintaining
keeping the social ‘whole’.

13. An example of how it might not work
• Understanding a ritual.
• Rappaport (1967: 224-42) says a ritual is:
– “an information exchange device communicating
cultural, ecological and demographic data across the
boundaries of social groups”.
• So a ritual is doing something in the society:
– “rituals regulate the dispersal of human populations,
preserve a balance between farmed and fallowed
land, and keep domestic animals within an adaptive
goal range (Rappaport, 1971)

14. But… its too functional an
explanation
• This tells us something about the ritual’s
presence, but it doesn’t tell us:
– The form of the ritual
– The content of the ritual
– Why one type of ritual should occur rather than
another.
- Shanks and Tilley, 1992: 117

15. When You Find An Object…

16. What to do when you find an object
• When over 300 years old:

17. Portable Antiquities Scheme

18. Historical Objects
• There is no centralised location to report and
record these.
• You can create your own records using
archaeological standards.