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About Archaeology
About Archaeological Features and Artifacts
An artifact is defined as a portable object manufactured, modified, or used by humans, according to the Archaeological Institute of America.
Artifacts must be movable and show clear signs of being made, changed, or utilized by people.
Artifact or Artefact — which is correct?
Artifacts and artefacts are the same word and both spellings are correct.
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Artifact is the standard spelling in American and Canadian English.
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Artefact is the traditional spelling used in British, Australian, and other countries using Commonwealth English.
Examples of Artifacts are:
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Pottery and ceramics such as cooking pots, storage jars, oil lamps, and tableware
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Stone tools or lithics such as projectile points (arrowheads), scrapers, handaxes, and grinding stones
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Metal objects such as weapons, armor, coins, jewelry, keys, and construction nails.
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Glass such as bottles, perfume vials, trade beads, and window panes
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Bone and shells objects such as sewing needles, fishhooks, musical instruments, and decorative beads.
About Archaeological Sites
An archaeological site is a location or group of locations in which evidence in the form of artifacts or features of past human activity are present. Prehistoric sites are defined as those without a written record and include megalithic stone monuments, ancient cemeteries, rock art, and villages and cities, for example. Archaeologists define a historical site as a location where writing and written text has aided identification.
Historical sites range from ancient cities to shipwrecks and battlefields, to name a few. A site can also be as large as an entire settlement or as small as an area where something has been deposited such as a burial or hoard, which is a collection of items of value. Archaeologists study the locations and structures themselves in addition to found artifacts which include things such as stone tools, metal objects, jewelry, cups, bowls and pottery.
Dating Artifacts
According to the US National Park Service, archaeologists verify the age of archaeological artifacts, features and sites using relative and absolute dating methods.
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Relative dating arranges past events in a sequence in relation to one another.
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Absolute dating attempts to pinpoint a known interval in time such as a day, year, century, or millennia. However, it is rare that artifacts can be absolutely dated.
Techniques used in Relative Dating:
Cross Dating: Compares evidence found in one place at the same site or different similar sites to other places to determine age.
Geologic or Climate Dating: Assigns dates using geological stages related to documented climate and geology events.
Horizon Dating: Dates objects by a specific, widespread artifact type or cultural pattern that lets researchers link distant sites together.
Seriation: Orders evidence of human behavior into a chronological sequence based on changes in their style and popularity over time
Stratigraphy: Determines the chronological sequence of past human activity by studying the vertical layers of soil, debris, and rock (strata) accumulated at a site. This encompasses the Law of Superposition which holds that, when undisturbed, deeper layers are older than the ones above them.
Terminus Post Quem/TPQ: When several artifacts are recovered from a single stratum, the TPQ date corresponds with the earliest possible date when a layer of soil, a feature, or an artifact could have been deposited
Techniques used in Absolute Dating:
Dendrochronology: Counts tree rings in wooden objects to match regional chronologies and date when a tree was cut down.
Historical Records: Uses precise dates on (or described in) government records, diaries, newspapers, or other historical records.
Mean Ceramic Dating: Uses a statistical technique to estimate the middle or average date of occupation for an archaeological site based on the pottery fragments (sherds) found there
Obsidian Hydration: Measures the microscopic amount of water absorbed on freshly broken obsidian surfaces. Thicker hydration bands equate to longer exposure.
Radiocarbon Dating: Used to date organic and non-metallic objects that are less than 50,000 years old, this method provides accurate age estimates by measuring the amount of decay of carbon-14.
Thermoluminescence Dating: Used to date artifacts by heating them up to measure the amount of radiation gained over time. This method is used primarily for dating pottery and can be used for artifacts up to 200,000 years old.
Archaeological Study and Preservation
There are a number of different ways Archaeological sites are preserved over time.
Artifacts that have been buried naturally by sediments in water, wind gravity or due to decomposed vegetation as in jungles, are much more likely to be preserved than those that are exposed to the ravages of weather and time. Humans also deliberately bury sites or cover sites unwittingly and incidentally. Throughout the world, it is common to find newer structures built on top of, or using older ones.
Indeed, many archaeological sites and artifacts have been discovered by accident, as a farmer plows a field or a backhoe digs the foundation of a building. But archaeologists actively search areas that are either known to have had human habitation or are deemed likely to have supported human populations. This is done by a process called surveying, which involves walking, analyzing and digging on locations. Geophysical surveys are also used, with ground penetrating radar which measures and maps soil magnetism and electromagnetic radiation, which bounces radio signals back from subsurface structures.
The Field of Archaeology
Within the field of archaeology, there are many areas of specialization. Some of the archaeologists you will most likely meet have specializations in:
Prehistoric archaeology: the study of peoples who didn’t yet have a form of written language.
Historical archaeology: the study of places, things, and issues contextualized within the written records and oral traditions. Historical archaeology focuses primarily on the recent past, usually the last 500 to 600 years, often corresponding to literate or post-medieval societies.
Underwater archaeology: the study of remains and artifacts that lie underwater, like sunken ships and their cargo.
Bioarchaeology: the study of human remains to contextualize human life or the past environment while Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains by identification from archaeological contexts.
Aerial archaeology: As the name implies, this involves looking at the ground from above to look for things like patterns, earthworks and burial mounds that are difficult to see from ground level.