Archaeological Techniques

Approaches to Understanding the Human Past

Many people are fascinated by the human past.
This fascination may stem from recognizing ourselves in the objects left behind by previous generations.
Relics of past civilizations, such as cultural artifacts, temples, and burial remains, help us understand the thoughts and worldviews of ancient peoples.
Human curiosity has sometimes led to fantastical myths about giant humans, dragons, and extraterrestrial beings in the quest to understand ancient societies.
Archaeology uses less speculative methods to study the human past, relying on scientific approaches and techniques.

Archaeological Techniques

The first step in archaeological field research is surveying an area for surface artifacts or cultural debris.
Surveys can involve:
- Walking across a field.
- Using technologies like drones or Google Earth to search for unusual topography and potential structures.
Cultural artifacts found may lead to an archaeological excavation of the site.
Random sampling of excavation units or test pits can determine a site’s potential based on the quantity of cultural materials found.
GPS coordinates are collected for each piece of cultural debris, along with notes on specific plants and animals, which can indicate potential natural resources.
Features such as trails, roads, and house pits are documented in field notes.
Government agencies have different protocols for defining an archaeological site; a common standard is six cultural objects found in close proximity.
Site preparation for excavation:
- Dividing the site into square sections using a grid system.
- This allows documenting and mapping all artifacts and features as they are found in situ (in the original location).
All objects and features are assigned catalog or accession numbers, which are written on labels and attached to the artifacts, especially if they are removed from the site.
Excavation Process:
- A slow process requiring careful removal of earth from around fragile bones and artifacts.
- Tools used include trowels and even toothbrushes.
- Soil samples may be collected for pollen studies.

Ecofacts and Specialists

Ecofacts: objects of natural origins (seeds, shells, animal bones) found at a site.
Zooarchaeologists: specialists who study animal remains.
Archaeo botanists: specialists who analyze floral (plant) remains, focusing on historical relationships between plants and people over time.

Documentation and Context

Every cultural and natural object and feature is fully documented in field notes.
Exact placement and coordinates are recorded on a map using the grid system.
Primary context: the original location and coordinates of an object.
Moving objects before documentation loses the archaeological context and associated data.
Archaeological context: the key foundation of archaeological principles and practice; understanding the significance and age of artifacts requires knowing their context and association with other objects in situ.
Secondary context: objects that have been removed from their primary context.
Careful and proper documentation is vitally important for future research and analysis.

Archaeological Dating Methods

Establishing the age of cultural objects is crucial for archaeological research.
Determining the age of a site and its artifacts helps understand the development and changes in human cultures over time.
Dating techniques are also used in paleontology and geology to study ancient animal and plant species and the Earth’s evolution.

Relative Dating

The earliest dating methods used principles of relative dating, developed in geology.
Geologists observed layers of different types of stone in exposed cliffsides, called strata (singular: stratum).
They hypothesized that lower strata were older than higher strata, known as the law of superposition.
The law of superposition: objects in deeper layers are older than objects in layers above.
Application to archaeology: stratigraphic superposition.
Any artifact within a stratum or cutting across strata in a cross-cutting relationship is younger than the stratum itself.
Disturbances in strata can be caused by natural forces (volcanoes, floods) and human, animal, or plant intervention.
Nicolas Steno first proposed the law of superposition in 1669.
Early applications provided ages for megafauna and dinosaur bones, showing they were deposited tens of thousands of years apart.
Specific sequences of strata noted in several sites can be assumed to have the same ages for the same strata at different locations.
Archaeologists use archaeological stratification to determine human cultural contexts.
Stratigraphic layers below cultural layers provide a basis for determining age, with layers above assumed to be more recent.

Typological Sequences

Typological sequences compare created objects to other objects of similar appearance to determine how they are related.
Used to understand relationships between common objects.
Example: comparing spearpoints created by Indigenous peoples to analyze how they changed over time based on their relative positions in an archaeological site.
Seriation: a relative dating method in which artifacts are placed in chronological order once they are determined to be of the same culture.
Flinders Petrie introduced seriation in the 19th century to date burials with no date evidence, using pottery.
Typological sequences of pottery, stone tools, and other objects reveal changes in culture, social structure, and worldviews over time.
Significant changes in stratigraphy during the agricultural age (Neolithic period, around 12,000 BCE) include:
- Tended soils.
- Pollens indicating cultivation of specific plants.
- Evidence of more sedentary living patterns.
- Increased use of pottery for food and grain storage.
Archaeological evidence indicates a growing population and a more complex cultural and economic system with ownership of cattle and land and the beginning of trade.
Trade activities can be determined when pottery types associated with one site appear in other locations.
Recognizing connections between objects used in trade can shed light on possible economic and political relationships between neighboring communities and settlements.

Chronometric Dating Methods

Chronometric dating methods (also known as absolute dating methods) rely on chemical or physical analysis of archaeological objects.
They provide more precise dating ranges than relative dating methods.
Radiocarbon dating: uses the radioactive isotope carbon-14 ( ${}^{14}C$ ) to date organic materials.
- Once a living organism dies, the carbon within it begins to decay at a known rate.
- The amount of remaining residual carbon can be measured to determine when the organism died, within a margin of error of 50 years.
- Valid for samples of organic tissue between 300 and 50,000 years old.
- Objects collected for testing are sealed in nonporous containers to prevent contamination.
Dating systems that measure the atomic decay of uranium or the decay of potassium into argon are used to date nonorganic materials such as rocks.
- The rates of decay of radioactive materials are known and can be measured.
- The radioactive decay clock begins when the elements are first created, and this decay can be measured to determine when the objects were created and/or used in the past.
Volcanic materials are particularly useful for dating sites because volcanoes deposit lava and ash over wide areas, and all the material from an eruption will have a similar chemical signature. Once the ash is dated, cultural materials can also be dated based on their position relative to the ash deposit.
Dendrochronology: relies on measuring tree rings to determine the age of ancient structures or dwellings made of wood.
- Tree rings develop annually and vary in width depending on the quantity of nutrients and water available in a specific year.
- Cross dating is accomplished by matching patterns of wide and narrow rings between core samples taken from similar trees in different locations.
- This information can then be applied to date archaeological remains that contain wood, such as posts and beams.
- Dendrochronology has been used at the Pueblo Bonita archaeological site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, to help date house structures that were occupied by the Pueblo people between 800 and 1150 CE.
- The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, based in Tucson, is the world’s oldest dendrochronology lab.
The most effective approach for dating archaeological objects is to apply a variety of dating techniques, which allows the archaeologist to triangulate or correlate data. Correlating multiple methods of dating provides strong evidence for the specific time period of an archaeological site.

Early Conservation Efforts

The conservation movement began in the 19th century due to the recognition of destruction or endangerment of animals, plants, and environments.
Efforts began in the 1860s to protect natural landscapes and habitats, motivated by concern for wildlife and natural areas, as well as sporting organizations and recreationists.
The primary aim was to preserve significant natural ecosystems for parks or wilderness areas.
Many areas preserved by these early efforts are still protected today, such as Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks.
Early conservation included collecting specimens for display in natural history museums, part of a movement known as naturalism, which seeks to understand the world through direct observation of nature.
The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw growth in naturalist collections worldwide as cities and nations sought to establish natural history museums.
These collections are useful to zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists, who use them to identify natural objects and animal remains found at human burial sites.
Many archaeology labs have collections of animal skeletons for comparative anatomy, analysis, and identification.

Museum Collections and Indigenous Artifacts

Native American baskets and other Indigenous art objects were collected and placed in natural history museums.
Totem poles gathered from America’s Northwest Coast in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are common in older museums.
Most museums sought to purchase such artifacts, but some were stolen when Indigenous owners were unwilling to sell.
Many natural history museums established dioramas depicting Indigenous peoples and animals in their “natural” world.
The practice of installing dioramas of Indigenous people is now heavily criticized because of the implication that Indigenous peoples are akin to animals and plants.
Many museums have stopped this practice and have even dropped the phrase natural history from their names; however, some maintain the designation and still display dioramas of Indigenous peoples.

Salvage Anthropology

Connected to the collecting of Indigenous artifacts is a practice known as salvage anthropology.
Salvage anthropology: an effort to collect the material culture of Indigenous peoples believed to be going extinct in the later 19th century.
Anthropologists collected material objects, stories, language lists, and ethnographies from tribal peoples worldwide.
Collections were made through legitimate means (purchasing objects, recording traditional stories) but also involved theft or purchases from intermediary traders.
Many anthropologists were hired by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) and spent time living with Native peoples on reservations.
Language was a special research focus, as many Native languages were rapidly going extinct.
Analysis of language can reveal the meaning of words, their context, and a culture’s philosophy and worldviews.
Some anthropologists supplemented their income by buying cultural objects at a low cost and selling them to museums at a higher rate, which is now considered unethical and exploitative.
The anthropological research of this period has been criticized for focusing on cultural knowledge while ignoring the hardships faced by the culture.
Leonard J. Frachtenberg was an anthropologist working during the salvage anthropology period who helped the people he studied.

Leonard J. Frachtenberg's Contributions

Around the turn of the 20th century, Frachtenberg collected the languages of the people living on the Siletz Reservation in Oregon.
He worked with collaborators from the Coos, Coquille, Lower Umpqua, and Alsea tribes.
He published a series of oral histories based on his research.
He helped the tribes locate lost unratified treaties from the 1850s and use them to successfully sue the federal government for payment for their ancestral land.
He helped a Coquille man, George Wasson, travel to Washington, DC, and locate copies of the treaties in the National Archives.
In 1908, the tribes began the process of successfully suing the federal government for payment for their lands.
This process took some 40 years to complete for many tribes, and not all tribes have been fairly paid to this day.

Museum Collections and Indigenous Perspectives

Most materials collected during salvage anthropology ended up in museums and university archives.
Many natural history museums now display large dioramas featuring the material objects of numerous tribes.
Museum research libraries house extensive collections of manuscripts and ethnographies.
Archaeologists have contributed to these collections; many museums contain large collections of human remains.
Indigenous peoples have criticized these collections, especially the gathering of human remains, which is seen as sacrilegious.
There are millions of sets of human remains in museum repositories that have never been studied and perhaps never will be.
Anthropologists spent so much time collecting that they had little time to study or analyze what they found.
There are millions of material artifacts and ethnographic manuscripts that have never been fully studied.
These archived materials offer research opportunities for anthropologists as well as for Indigenous peoples, who are using them to recover parts of their cultures.

Henry Zenk and Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic anthropologist Henry Zenk has studied the languages and cultures of the tribes of western Oregon.
He conducted research with the Grand Ronde tribe in the 1970s and 1980s and became a proficient speaker of Chinuk Wawa, a trade language.
He has taught the language at the Grand Ronde Reservation for nearly 30 years.
He is an expert on the Kalapuya languages and began a project to translate the Melville Jacobs Kalapuya notebooks in 2013.

Melville Jacobs and Kalapuya Languages

Melville Jacobs was an anthropologist from the University of Washington who studied the languages of the Northwest Coast from 1928 until his death in 1971.
He filled more than 100 field notebooks with information on the languages of the peoples of western Oregon, with a special focus on Kalapuya.
Jacobs published a book of Kalapuya oral histories in 1945, Kalapuya Texts.
He worked with Kalapuya speaker John Hudson to translate numerous texts prepared by earlier anthropologists Leonard Frachtenberg and Albert Gatschet.
Zenk and colleague Jedd Schrock translated a set of the Jacobs notebooks that recorded the knowledge and history of a Kalapuya man named Louis Kenoyer.
In 2017, Zenk and Schrock published My Life, by Louis Kenoyer: Reminiscences of a Grand Ronde Reservation Childhood.
Zenk and Schrock’s work demonstrates the research possibilities offered by previous anthropologists' work.

Zenk's Collaboration with the Grand Ronde Tribe

Zenk worked closely with the Grand Ronde tribe to ensure the translation of Kenoyer’s story would benefit the tribe.
His work spanned 50 years, beginning with his PhD project and continuing with teaching Chinuk Wawa to tribal members.
The tribe has an extensive language immersion project for young people.
Zenk has been a consistent influence as an advisor, teacher, master-apprentice instructor, and researcher.
Zenk’s work has helped the tribe recover parts of its culture and history.

Albert Gatschet: Pioneer of Native American Language Study

Albert Gatschet (1832-1907) was a Swiss-American ethnologist who emigrated to the United States in 1868.
He was interested in linguistics and Native American languages, and gained attention in 1872 for his comparative analysis of 16 southeastern tribal vocabularies.
In 1877, he worked on the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region as an ethnologist.
He collected many notebooks of languages from Native peoples in California and Oregon.
He is noted for his studies of the languages of the southeastern tribes and his ethnography of the Klamath Tribes of Oregon.
Gatschet was fluent in numerous languages and published in English, French, and German.
His first large work was Orts-etymologische Forschungen aus der Schweiz (1865–1867), a study of Swiss place names.

Gatschet's Accomplishments in the Field

Gatschet analyzed the Timucua language of northern Florida, determining it was a distinct language group that had gone extinct.
He examined the Catawba language of South Carolina, concluding it was related to the Siouan languages of the western Great Plains.
From 1881 to 1885, Gatschet worked in Louisiana, discovering two new languages and completing ethnographic descriptions of the southern tribes.
In 1886, he found the last speakers of the Biloxi and Tunica languages and related them to the Siouan languages as well.
He published his studies of the Gulf tribes in A Migration Legend of the Creek Indians (1884, 1888).
In 1877 and 1878, Gatschet spent time among the tribes of the Grand Ronde Reservation in Oregon.
He collected field notes on the Kalapuya, Molala, and Shasta languages and published notes about the Kalapuya mounds.
He researched the traditions of the Tualatin Kalapuya people in their traditional lands.
He worked on the Klamath Reservation, where he collected field notes on the Klamath language.
He worked his field notes into a two-part work, The Klamath Indians of Southwestern Oregon (1890).
Gatschet was commissioned by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in 1891 to investigate the Algonquian people, a study he never fully completed.

Museum Interpretation and Perspective

Artifact arrangements and written descriptions were made by museum curators without consulting the originators or their descendants.
Museum exhibits have been found to contain inaccurate information about artifacts’ material composition, makers, tribal cultures, collection sites, and proper use.
Several museums are now seeking the help of Native people to better understand and more accurately tell the story of their collections.
Native perspectives are correcting misconceptions about the meaning and context of cultural artifacts and providing correct information.
Native input is also guiding museums in making choices about how objects are arranged and displayed.

Ethnography and Ethnology

Ethnography is a method used by cultural anthropologists to create a description of a culture or society.
Ethnographers gather and utilize information from fieldwork, museum collections, government records, and archaeological data.
Armchair anthropology: theories about human societies and human behaviors proposed solely based on secondhand information.
Lewis Henry Morgan practiced armchair anthropology.
Franz Boas insisted that scholars obtain ethnographical information directly from the peoples they aimed to write about.
Boas established standards of field research that became the foundation of contemporary anthropological practices.
Boas identified two basic questions for anthropologists: “Why are the tribes and nations of the world different, and how have the present differences developed?”
Ethnology: a cross-cultural comparison of different groups.
Early ethnology aimed to understand how various Indigenous societies were related to one another.
Early anthropologists explored questions about migration patterns of peoples from the “old” to the “new” world.
Ethnoarchaeology: a form of archaeology in which archaeologists access ethnographic information about recent or existing human cultures to draw conclusions about human cultures in the archaeological past.
Lewis Binford drew comparisons between contemporary Indigenous peoples' disposal of animal remains and the evidence observed in Nunamiut refuse sites.

Perspective and Interpretation in Ethnography

Ethnography is still commonly used by cultural anthropologists.
Practitioners consult multiple informants to gather a variety of perspectives on a culture or society.
Early anthropological studies often only invited male perspectives, introducing male bias.
The most challenging aspect of fieldwork in cultural anthropology is to observe and study another culture without bias.
Ethnocentric or etic perspective: judging a culture according to the standards of one’s own culture and belief system.
Emic perspective: observing a culture from the perspective of the people being researched.
Feminist anthropology: attempts to address male bias by expanding the focal points of anthropological inquiry to include areas of life such as family, marriage, and child-rearing, as well as the economic and social roles played by women.
Women’s contributions and perspectives became much more pronounced in the later parts of the 20th century.
Other perspectives emerged in anthropology in the 1970s as more members of minority groups began entering the field.
Indigenous anthropology: a subfield for practitioners with Indigenous ancestors.

Participant Observation and Interviewing Informants

Researchers studying other cultures practice a method called participant observation, which entails directly participating in the activities and events of a host culture and keeping records of observations about these activities.
Researchers may create various types of records of their interactions as participants and their observations about the host culture and environment. These might take the form of field notebooks, computer files, digital recordings, photographs, or film.
Researchers working in the field may also collect objects that will remind them of the culture they are studying, often memorabilia such as maps, tourism brochures, books, or crafts made by the people they are observing.
An important source of information about a culture is interviews with various people who grew up in that culture.
Researchers will normally conduct an interview in a familiar space for the informant, such as the informant’s home.
Many informants are chosen because they are deeply conscious of multiple aspects of their culture. This type of insider information is vitally important to an anthropological research project.
Survey questions may also be asked during these meetings.
The use of recording equipment, for both audio and video recordings, is common during interviews. However, such equipment may be considered intrusive by some, and their use is always at the discretion of the informant.

Ethical Considerations in Anthropological Research

Contemporary sociocultural researchers and anthropologists must follow protocols established by an institutional review board (IRB) as well as any research protocols specific to the culture being researched.
Researchers conducting sociocultural, medical, or clinical studies must gain written consent for all interviews from their informants, and they must be transparent as to why they are conducting research and how it will be used in the future.
Researchers will often assign to their subject culture significant rights to review reports and edit and correct erroneous information and interpretations as well as ownership rights of the final product and the research data.
Alternately, researchers may destroy research data once the project is over so that it cannot be used in ways other than what was originally intended.
Long-term research projects are becoming the norm for many professional researchers, who establish trusting relationships with collaborators over the length of their careers.
Contemporary anthropological researchers often assign ultimate ownership of the material they collect to the culture-bearers who provided the information.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative Information

Quantitative information: measurable or countable data that can provide insight into research questions.
Statistics created from quantitative data help researchers understand trends and changes over time.
Qualitative data: allows anthropologists to understand culture based on more subjective analyses of language, behavior, ritual, symbolism, and interrelationships of people.
Through the triangulation of data, anthropologists can use both objective and frequency data (for example, survey results) and subjective data (such as observations) to provide a more holistic understanding.

Modeling in Anthropology

Many anthropologists create models to help others visualize and understand their research findings.
Models help people understand the relationships between various points of data and can include qualitative elements as well.
Examples of models include maps, graphs, calendars, timelines, and charts.
GPS, or the Global Position System, is increasingly used in archaeology.
Construction companies are now using GPS maps of important cultural sites so that they may avoid destroying them.
Archaeologists can create complex layered maps of traditional Native landscapes, with original habitations, trails, and resource locations marked.
Layers can be created that contain cultural and historic information.

The Science of Anthropology

Not all anthropological research is done in the field. There is much to be learned from the collections of manuscripts and artifacts housed in universities and museums.
Anthropology is a science, and as such, anthropologists follow the scientific method.
First, an anthropologist forms a research question based on some phenomenon they have encountered. They then construct a testable hypothesis based on their question.
To test their hypothesis, they gather data and information from one or many sources.
The anthropologist then draws a conclusion. Conclusions are rarely 100 percent positive or 100 percent negative.
When a hypothesis is rigorously tested and the results conform with empirical observations of the world, then a theory is considered “likely to be accurate.”

Archives and Three-Dimensional Collections

Archival collections contain published, created, or original manuscripts that are deemed significant enough to be placed in conditions designed to preserve them against damage or loss.
Photographs are a major resource in many archives, and they need special handling.
Researchers must wear gloves when handling materials to prevent damage from the oils and acidity of human skin.
Normally, archival collections do not circulate (i.e., cannot be removed from the host site), and researchers may have to apply for permission to enter the site or use any information.
Most archives offer downloadable finding aids of their most important collections on their websites, and there may be additional printed finding aids available on request.
Three-dimensional collections of objects such as basketry and pottery are normally housed separately from manuscript collections.
Collections of animal and human remains utilized by biological anthropologists or archaeologists must be properly stored and controlled against further degradation by reducing temperatures and maintaining moisture controls.
Objects made from organic materials—such as wooden canoes, basketry, reed sandals, or human remains—are particularly prone to degradation.
All objects in collections storage must be well organized to make them accessible for further research opportunities.
Collection materials that have been used to make claims about human experience or evolution must remain accessible to future researchers in case there are challenges or additional questions about their findings.

Ownership Ethics

A question being asked by both anthropologists and subjects of research today is who owns the objects housed in material collections.
Questions of ownership become particularly pressing when the objects in question are human remains.
Repatriation is the process of restoring human remains and/or objects of religious or cultural importance to the peoples from whom they originated.
In the United States, repatriation is executed under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), passed into law in 1990.
Another important piece of legislature is the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), passed in 1966.
Successful consultation often takes place during the earliest planning stages of a project. Lack of early consultation can lead to a failure to identify historic resources of cultural and religious importance.
The process places the burden of determining the potential effects of the project on the federal agency, according to three established categories: no potential to effect, no adverse effect, and adverse effect.
The NHPA is not perfect, as it does not completely halt construction that will destroy a cultural site and does not apply to collections placed in repositories before 1966.
More recently, NAGPRA has made it possible for tribes to repatriate objects covered under the act, such as human remains and funerary objects.
Concerns about ownership have also been raised regarding the ethnological and ethnographic research collected in millions of documents in hundreds of research collections around the world.
One example of Indigenous peoples utilizing archive materials to their advantage is offered by Oregon’s Coquille Indian Tribe, which made use of archival documents to successfully restore their tribe to federal recognition in 1989 after the tribe was declared “terminated” by the federal government in 1954.
Essential to the tribe’s success was George Wasson Jr., son of the aforementioned George Wasson who was aided by Leonard Frachtenberg.

The Summers Collection Example

The Summers Collection is a collection of more than 600 Native objects from the West Coast of the United States, collected by the Reverend Robert Summers, an Episcopalian minister.
A large portion of the collection, some 300 objects, was collected from the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation, which is close to where Summers lived in McMinnville, Oregon.
The value of this collection lies not only in the objects and their unusually good preservation but also in the care Summers took to document the people he purchased them from, their use, and their cultural background.
Since then, the tribe has worked through a series of museum curators to see if it would be possible to repatriate the collection to the Grand Ronde.
In 2018, the Grand Ronde tribe was able to negotiate the loan of some 16 objects from the collection.
The objects were placed on display in the new Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center in Grand Ronde.
After more than 100 years of assimilation, many traditional skills had been lost to the Grand Ronde people. The opportunity to regain some of this lost ancestral knowledge by studying these cultural goods is a rare gift.