Archaeology Essentials: Understanding the Evidence of Past Human Activity

Two. What Is Left? The Variety of the Evidence

The relics of past human activity are all around us. Some of them were deliberate constructions, built to last, for example the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, or the temples of Mesoamerica and India. Others, such as the remains of the Maya irrigation systems of Mexico and Belize, are the visible relics of activities, the aim of which was not primarily to impress the observer, but that still command respect today for the scale of the enterprise they document.

Most of the remains of archaeology are far more modest, however. They are the discarded garbage from the daily activities of human existence: the food remains, the bits of broken pottery, the fractured stone tools, the debris that is formed everywhere as people go about their daily lives.

In this chapter we define the basic archaeological terms, briefly survey the scope of the surviving evidence, and look at the great variety of ways in which it has been preserved for us. From the frozen soil of the Russian steppes, for instance, have come the wonderful finds of Pazyryk, those great chieftains' burials where wood and textiles and skins are splendidly preserved. From the dry caves of Peru and other arid environments have come remarkable textiles, baskets, and other remains that often perish completely. And by contrast, from wetlands, whether the swamps of Florida or the lake villages of Switzerland, further organic remains are being recovered, this time preserved not by the absence of moisture, but by its abundant presence to the exclusion of air.

Extremes of temperature and of humidity have preserved much. So too have natural disasters. The volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in Italy is the most famous of them, but there have been others, such as the eruption of the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador in the second century C E, which buried land surfaces and settlement remains in a large part of the southern Maya area.

Unfortunately most archaeological sites are not in areas subjected to extremes of climate or volcanic activity, and levels of preservation can vary enormously. Our knowledge of the early human past is dependent in this way on the human activities and natural processes that have formed the

Rhine River archaeological record, and on those further processes that determine, over long periods of time, what is left and what is gone for ever. Today we can hope to recover much of what remains, and to learn from it by asking the right questions in the right way.

Basic Categories of Archaeological Evidence

The evidence studied by archaeologists very often includes artifacts-object used, modified, or made by people. But equally important is the study of organic and environmental remains-known as ecofacts-that, although not made by humans, can still be very revealing about many aspects of past human activity. Much archaeological research concentrates on the analysis of these artifacts and ecofacts that are found together on sites, which in turn are most productively studied together with their surrounding landscapes and grouped together into regions. Some of these different scales at which archaeologists operate, as well as the terminology they use, are illustrated above and opposite.

Artifacts are humanly made or modified portable objects, such as stone tools, pottery, and metal weapons. But artifacts provide evidence to help us answer all the key questions-not just technological ones-addressed in this book. A single clay vessel or pot can be analyzed in a number of different ways. The clay may be tested to produce a date for the vessel and thus perhaps a date for the location where it was found. It could also be tested to find the source of the clay and thus give evidence for the range and contacts of the group that made the vessel. Pictorial decoration on the pot's surface could help to form or be related to a sequence of design styles (a typology), and it could tell us something about ancient beliefs, particularly if it shows gods or other figures. And analysis of the vessel's shape and any food or other residues found in it can yield information about the pot's use, perhaps in cooking, as well as about ancient diet.