Archaeology

B

Artefacts

The bulk of the archaeological record is made up of humanly made artefacts. Thus stone tools are enormously important to the study of the Palaeolithic period. However, stone tools are virtually indestructible, whereas organic materials—bone, antler, wood, leather, sinew, ropework, basketwork, and featherwork—decay under most normal conditions. It is noteworthy that analysis of the wear on many Palaeolithic stone tools indicates that they were used for the procurement or working of organic materials, suggesting that a large part of the Palaeolithic tool kit is lost forever.

However, arid, frozen, and certain waterlogged conditions (which all inhibit the action of destructive micro-organisms) can aid the preservation of organic materials. Thanks to the aridity of desert environments, bodies in shallow prehistoric graves in Egypt have survived with skin, hair, and nails intact, even without mummification; burials in coastal Peru are similarly well preserved, together with the textile shrouds in which the dead were wrapped. Natural refrigeration has likewise preserved bodies in Altai tombs in southern Siberia to such an extent that not only the tattoos on the skin of the bodies but also fragile materials such as leather and felt have survived.

Growing numbers of archaeologists are turning to wetland sites—in bogs, lakes, or other watery environments—where one can likewise find preserved the organic materials that have usually decayed and disappeared at sites in dry land. The most extreme kind of waterlogged site is, of course, to be found beneath the sea. Underwater archaeology has tackled drowned cities, sunken harbours, and shipwrecks. In 2000 archaeologists reported the discovery of two separate sets of underwater ruins. One site in Lake Titicaca was estimated to be between 1,000 and 1,500 years old and included a crop terrace, a road, and a wall some 800 m (2,624 ft) long. The second discovery was of a rectangular structure containing well-preserved artefacts 95 m (312 ft) below the surface of the Black Sea. Since, when dealing with shipwrecks, it is rarely feasible to lift an entire vessel to the surface to transport it to land, as in the case of the Mary Rose in Britain and the Vasa in Sweden, much of the archaeological work has to be done under water. This can be hazardous and difficult, as well as long and expensive, but the rewards are great, thanks to the yield of well-preserved organic remains, as well as new knowledge of shipbuilding, trade routes, and maritime traffic. Shipwrecks are invaluable time capsules, struck by disaster at one frozen moment in the past, in the midst of their everyday operations.

C

Human Remains

Human remains can provide some of the most direct evidence about the human past. Depending on their completeness and state of preservation, human remains can show the age and sex of the deceased, their appearance, their state of health, sometimes the cause of death, and in some cases even their family relationships. The vast majority of surviving human remains are skeletons or cremations. However, a number of more or less intact bodies are also known: they have survived by desiccation (Peru), by freezing (as in the case of the Iceman), by being submerged in a peat bog (as in the case of the numerous bog bodies of north-western Europe), or by purposeful mummification (as in the case of many royal Egyptian burials). Through the application of a vast range of tests, ranging from forensic examinations to computer scans and endoscopy, these bodies can reveal a wealth of information concerning diseases and parasites, diet, occupation and injury, clothing, and physical appearance.

V

Experimental Archaeology

The aims of experimental archaeology are to identify certain activities with certain traces in the archaeological record by attempting to recreate the circumstances and methods of those activities. For example, different kinds of stone tools have been copied, and used for specific tasks, so that the resulting traces and wear-patterns can be assessed and compared with those on archaeological specimens. In addition, the replication of stone tools reveals a great deal about original manufacturing techniques. An even simpler way to gain insights into manufacture is to fit ancient stone tools back together again: this refitting can produce spectacular results that enable every stage of the production process to be followed. This technique was used at a prehistoric 'tool factory' discovered in Kenya's Rift Valley in 1999. Reuniting chips with the stones they had been struck from revealed tool-making techniques at the 2.3-million-year-old site that demonstrated the hominids of that time were capable of far more manual dexterity than had previously been thought.

Many of the experimental procedures used in the study of stone tools are also carried out when investigating the technology of other materials and of later periods—such as woodwork, fibres and textiles, pottery, glass-making, and different kinds of metalworking. In fact this experimental archaeology has now become a major sub-discipline. One of the longest-running projects is Butser Hill Farm, in Hampshire, southern England, which was set up in 1972 with the aim of recreating an Iron Age farm in which a community lived and carried out such tasks as hut-building, farming, butchering, the storage of grain, metalworking, and making pottery and stone tools with replicas of Iron Age equipment and by methods supposed, from the archaeological record, to have been used during the Iron Age.

VI

Ethnoarchaeology

A related but less active approach to this kind of work is ethnoarchaeology, in which archaeologists seek to obtain information about the past by observing present-day peoples. Research carried out among the Inuit by Lewis Binford has shed light on the practices of ancient hunter-gatherer societies. The making of pottery has also proved particularly popular in ethnoarchaeological studies: questions asked include how, when, why, and by whom vessels are made; how much time and effort are invested in them; why they are decorated in certain ways; how often and in what circumstances they get broken; and how and where they are discarded. Archaeology is supremely interested in everyday activities such as these.

VII

Environmental Archaeology

Environmental archaeology examines the relationship between human societies and the natural world and takes as its point of departure the premise that environment governs human life. In recent decades archaeologists have begun to take a close interest in such evidence as pollen grains, sediments, and rodent, snail, or insect remains in order to reconstruct various ancient environments as accurately as possible.

Subsistence—the quest for food—is the most fundamental necessity of human life, and archaeology has developed many ways to investigate the clues to what people ate. The vast majority of these clues take the form of animal and plant remains that may be found in a human occupation site, and that are studied by zoo-archaeologists and archaeo-botanists respectively.

In recent years, sophisticated new chemical techniques have been developed that can detect and often identify food residues on tools and inside vessels. Chemical analysis of residues in vessels has identified such substances as milk, cheese, and fat. Evidence can also be recovered from the alimentary tracts of preserved bodies or from human faeces.

Teeth are made of two of the hardest tissues in the body, so they usually survive in good condition. Microscopic examination of the surface of human teeth reveals abrasions and scratches that, through comparison with the teeth of people such as the meat-eating Inuit or the vegetarian Melanesians, can be related to meat or vegetation in the diet. Tooth decay can also be informative, indicating a reliance on starchy and sugary foods.

The greatest breakthrough, however, has come through the realization that chemical analysis of human bone collagen can reveal much about long-term diet. Different categories of plants contain different ratios of certain isotopes of carbon, or nitrogen, and when plants are eaten these ratios become fixed in bone tissue. Analysis of bone collagen can show whether marine or land plants predominated in the diet, and hence land or marine resources of other kinds. When human bones from different periods are available, the technique is useful for detecting change through time.