Methods of Archaeology
Below are a series of questions about methods of archaeology, who studies archaeology, how do you do archaeology, what you might likely find at some of the adjacent archaeological sites to IslandWood (Brewer 2004b).
What sites might you find at IslandWood?
What are you likely to find if you excavated a Shell Midden?
What are you likely to find if you excavated the Port Blakely Mill Complex?
Archaeology is piecing together a jigsaw puzzle when one has only a few pieces and no picture on the front of the box (Stein and Phillips 2002:151).
Objects dropped by people hold a fascination for all those who dream about the past. Archaeologists use a wide variety of objects and their relationships to each other (context) to test hypotheses about the past (Stein and Phillips 2002:145).
Archaeologists study of past cultures, rather than living ones (although there is overlap). Archaeologists want to know everything about a past culture that a cultural anthropologist wants to know about a living one. The big difference is in the available data: a cultural anthropologist can participate in activities, observe people, and question them about what they do and why. An archaeologist can look only at traces of human activities and infer from those traces the "what, why, how, and when." The link between cultural anthropology and archaeology is the assumption that present human behavior can serve as an analogue to understanding past human behavior (Sutton and Arkush 1996:2).
You will find many, many items that require careful scrutiny; some of them may have been eroded by natural processes or modified by cultural use.
Items are usually grouped into several categories for analysis: botanical, faunal (birds and mammals), faunal (fish), faunal (shells), bone and antler tools, lithics (stone tools), and historical artifacts.
The type of material must be carefully recorded and usually contains at least ten codes for plants, shells, bones, lithics, charcoal, glass, metal, ceramic, basketry, combinations, and historical items.
Many sites contain culturally modified soil comprised of the discarded material remains from the people living at the site; this soil is called midden.
A midden is literally a decomposed garbage pile; a place where broken tools, used-up artifacts, shell, plant materials, bones, grease, charcoal and ash from fires, general household trash, etc. were thrown.
In prehistoric times, people often lived directly on such middens, and deposits accumulated as people continued to live on them.
Middens can contain house foundations, burials, hearths, and other remains from everyday life.
In historical sties, trash often was removed and deposited elsewhere (still the practice in our culture; we use garbage collection and landfills [giant middens!]) (Sutton and Arkush 1996:7).
You would find a complex story of the rich cultural and historical use patterns of the harbor.
You would most likely find more of an abundance of historical artifacts of, and, or relating to the adjacent mill complex and your recording procedure would require more detailed codes to distinguish foreign objects.
The available documentation of the PBMC, including archives, narratives, maps, and photographs, provides additional information. Some of this information may include records of locations, densities, health, and diversity of tree stand prior to extensive logging. What would these tell us about the natural ecosystem, species variability, and wildlife habitats prior to logging? What would they tell us about the health of successive timber stands (Schumacher 2004a, 2004b).
An archaeological project typically includes at least four phases: (1) research design and planning; (2)fieldwork; (3)laboratory work; and (4)reporting the results (Sutton and Arkush 1996:1).
(1) Research design and planning;
What questions does the project seek to answer? What are the projects goals? What type of project is it? What data will be collected? How will the data be collected? Where is the project? Why is the project important?
An archaeologist must think about all these questions before beginning any project, and keep records of all the steps (written proposals, maps, field notes) (Sutton and Arkush 1996:17). In addition, the archaeologist must fulfill an appropriate permit process before beginning any fieldwork, and make sure that all parties involved are informed.
(2) Fieldwork;
Fieldwork consists of two phases: an initial inventory (survey) and excavations.
Inventory (often called survey) is the process of looking for, and providing a preliminary assessment of, archaeological sites. The data only represents a sample of what could be present.
Excavations involve digging into a site and collecting the materials from that excavation. Excavations are conducted at sites for two basic reasons: (1) small-scale excavations, often called test excavations, are conducted to determine the presence, nature, extent, content, age, structure, and research potential of a site; and (2) large-scale excavations, sometimes called data recovery or mitigation, are designed to recover information useful to answer specific questions generated in the research design.
Excavations usually are conducted in discrete areas called units or pits. A unit is the hole made by the excavation and forms part (coupled with "levels", below) of the provenience of the materials within it. The size and shape of excavation units vary depending on the research design and field methods.
An excavation unit, called Unit X, Test Unit X, or some other appropriate label, is usually dug in levels. Levels are specific layers of soil removed during excavation and processed for cultural materials. Levels might be arbitrary (e.g. 10 cm at a time) or might follow distinct soil layers (stratigraphic levels). When possible, stratigraphic levels are used since it may better relate to the way the soil was deposited in prehistory and prevents mixing the deposits from different times. Arbitrary levels are used if no obvious stratigraphy is visible. In addition, the use of arbitrary levels insures a consistent volume of soil from level to level, making comparisons of recovered materials easier.
Materials removed from an excavation unit usually are process through steel mesh screens (1/8 inch, 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch, and 3/4 inch) so that soil falls through and the cultural items larger than the mesh size in the screen to be picked out and saved by the screener. Thus, the provenience of an artifact might be the 10-20 cm level of Unit X.
Sometimes artifacts are found in the excavation unit during the digging before it is screened. In such cases, the items are called in situ (this is a Latin phrase meaning "found in place" and is always italicized or underlined). An in situ item has a precise provenience; the exact measurements of its location in the unit measured from each wall and depth (rather than only a level-specific location). In situ items should be recorded and bagged separately from the screened constituents.
Other samples are often taken in the field, including soil samples for chemical, geological, pollen, phytolith, radiocarbon, protein, and other analyses. Each is processed and examined in different ways (Sutton and Arkush 1996:17-18).
(3) Laboratory work;
Materials from the field will be in marked bags (paper and/or plastic), and temporarily stored in large containers such as boxes or buckets.
Each collection unit (surface, excavation, level, stratum) will have its own field bag or bags containing the materials recovered and saved from that unit. Within each bag may be other, smaller containers (bags and/or vials) that fold the various items from the unit and level. These smaller containers may include materials that were sorted in the field according to artifact class, in situ items, or other samples. The provenience for the contents of the bag is listed in the outside (Sutton and Arkush 1996:19).
Included in the documentation form any site will be both general field notes, level notes, maps of the site in general (showing the location of units and features), and maps of each of the collection units. Level notes and maps may be in any of various styles and contain information regarding the locations of features, in situ items, disturbances, errors in excavations, and a brief review of what was found in each level or unit. Information on the content of a unit can be very useful in the event a mistake was made in the field; perhaps an error can be corrected by comparing the materials in the bag to the notes. The availability of the field record is an indispensable aid in the cataloguing process (Sutton and Arkush 1996:19,22).
The only materials delivered to the laboratory are those that were saved in the field; many items from the units are not saved and so are never seen by the laboratory people. We assume that the field people made correct decisions about what to keep and what not to keep, but the truth is that the artifacts and the ecofacts are invariably discarded accidentally in the field, resulted in a biased sample. Field bias may also occur as a part of the planned research design. If only certain kinds of data were being sought, other data may have been intentionally discarded (Sutton and Arkush 1996:22).(4) Reporting the results.
It is the ethical and scientific obligation of all researchers to report their data and interpretations, and failure to do this a very serious ethical offense. A report on an archaeological excavation/collection should follow a general format, such as suggested by the State Office of Historic Preservation (Sutton and Arkush 1996:22).
Results should be presented in tables, figures, maps, artifact illustrations, and photographs.
These pages were created by Matthew John Brewer on March 23, 2004 as part of the Graduate Program at IslandWood and fulfillment of the Independent Study Project.
To contact the webmaster or to find out more about IslandWood you should go to the contact us web page.
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