What’s Left? Material Evidence and Their Preservation

Basic categories of archaeological finds: 1. artefacts: portable objects used, modified or made by people: tools, pottery, metal weapons, jewellery etc. 2. features: non-portable objects, so humanly modified parts of a site that are non-portable: hearths, postholes, storage pits, ditches, soils, sediments etc. 3. organic and environmental remains or ‘ecofacts’ that are not objects: textiles, animal bones, skeletons, plant remains, soils, sediments (material deposited in the earth’s surface) Archaeological site: place where all these characteristics are found or where significant traces of human activity can be found Region: group of sites

Tell Halula, Syria

Sedgebury Camp, Iron Age site, England

Context Matrix Primary Context: Secondary Context: Context Provenience original context Secondary Context: Context disturbed by humans/nature recently or in the past Matrix Context Provenience Other finds

Formation Processes Cultural formation processes (C-transforms): ‘deliberate or accidental activities of human beings’ a. original human behaviour: tools, buildings b. deliberate burial: hoard/burial of the dead c. human destruction of archaeological record 2. Natural transformation processes (N-transforms): ‘natural events that govern burial and survival of archaeological record’ Inorganic materials Organic materials: only survival in exceptional circumstances – natural disasters, extremely dry, cold or wet conditions (waterlogged environments)

Quiz! 1. Cultural or natural formation process? 2. If cultural formation process: a. original human behaviour b. deliberate burial c. human destruction If natural formation process: a. is the find organic? b. is the find inorganic? and: How has it been preserved? a. Dry conditions b. Wet conditions c. Cold conditions d. Natural disaster e. Other

gold coins found in London, 1st century CE (Roman)

gold coins from ship wreck, 1865

Lindow Man (C-14 date: 2 BCE-119 CE), found at Lindow Moss, England in 1984

Iron Age burial

Caves of Lascaux, France (17,000 years old!), discovered in 1940

Vindolanda tablets (wood), Roman period, England Discovered in 1973

Plough marks, Etruria, Italy

Tollund Man, found near Silkeborg in Denmark in 1950 (C-14 date: 350 BCE)

Man found in desert sand of Egypt, 3000 BCE

Dead Sea scrolls, Qumran, Israel (third to first centuries BCE) Found in 1947

Discovery of thousands of papyri at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, from 1896 onwards

Buddha statues of Bamiyan (Afghanistan) destroyed by Taliban March 1, 2001

Ötzi the Iceman, found in 1991 (c. 3300 BCE)