INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

Lesson Objectives: Understand lab processing of data and materials, stone, ceramic, organic,
human, and other remains; dating and other analytical
methods.
each level of each excavation square.
How are archaeological data processed in the lab? The
obvious steps of washing and labeling and classifying
artifacts and other materials are easy to understand.
Less obvious is that it takes a lot of time just to do that.
For every day of digging, several weeks are needed for
laboratory processing. Our students and volunteers
spend the whole academic year on this, carefully
numbering artifacts by provenience, counting and
weighing them, and drawing up tables of stone tools,
potsherds, plant and animal remains from each site and
How do we do artifact and ecofact classification? Every science must begin with classification,
but what are the bases we use to define different artifact types? Are they biased, and do they
reflect what the makers of the artifacts thought? The obvious useful attributes are raw material
(stone, metal, glass, ceramic, etc.), morphology (form, including size, shape, design, etc.), and
style (more elusive—including design, decoration, etc.). Can we separate purely technological or
functional aspects of an artifact from stylistic aspects? Can we look at the pure utilitarian
function of an artifact but also the social and even ideological function? Let’s look at an artifact
type in the classroom—your writing implements (have students hold up various ones). Most of
them are long and skinny for functional reasons. What aspects might be stylistic? Even the color
of the lowly pencil: what does yellow designate? Anyone have a pencil of a different color?
What messages are on the pencils—printed company names, the university name? These
messages are social, even ideological. We can do the same with pens. What does the expensive
gold Cross pen show beyond pure function? Does it
function better to take notes?
Can we learn of function, style, social and ideological
implications from past artifacts? Can we assume they
will be similar to ours (no!). How does the
archaeologist interpret artifacts for which no function
is obvious (such as a cache or hidden pile of figurines,
a burial with a pot over its head, and so on)? We can
say, “must be ceremonial!”
Here we will do a coin trick. One student needs to give
me a handful of change (to be returned of course!) that
we can lay out under the document camera or even on
the table for all to see. We pretend that these are
discoidal artifacts recovered in excavations from
the