4.1: Material Culture

In this chapter, we will begin to look at material culture. Material culture is the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people create, use, and share as part of their culture. These tangible items can include tools, clothing, buildings, and art. They both indicate and influence a society's beliefs, values, and social structures. The subfield of archaeology is the study of material culture. It analyzes these materials to understand the relationship between people and the physical things they create and use.

Culture Is What We Make

Museums are buildings where objects of historical, artistic, scientific, or cultural interest are displayed. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian has one of the world’s largest collections of Native artifacts, including many two- and three-dimensional objects such as baskets, pottery, and preserved specimens representative of the lives of Native populations from all areas of the country.

This basket, woven by Kucadikadi (Mono Lake Paiute) artist Lucy Telles, is an excellent example of the art of basket weaving. Telles, whose work was done in the early part of the twentieth century, is widely admired for her use of color and innovative designs. (credit: “Mono Lake Paiute Basket” by Ernest Amoroso, National Museum of the American Indian/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain)

People living in groups learn to craft the things they need in order to make a living in their environment. Early human ancestors learned how to make sharp blades useful for processing meat. They shared their knowledge of toolmaking in groups, passing those skills down to younger generations. Objects that are made and used by humans in group contexts are called material culture. All of the tools developed by early hominins (blades, arrows, axes, etc.) are examples of material culture. All of the artifacts discovered by archaeologists (buildings, pottery, beads, etc.) are examples of material culture. The specialized knowledge and skills used for making material culture are called technology. Today, the word technology is often used to refer to electronic devices such as smartphones and computers. Our material culture now includes visual culture (media) and digital technologies. For anthropologists, both smartphones and obsidian blades are forms of material culture produced through specialized technologies. That is, technology refers to the knowledge and skills required to make blades, phones, and other objects of material culture.

Material culture is not just found in museums, of course. Material culture is all around. All of the furniture, appliances, books, dishes, and pictures on the walls in a typical American home are elements of material culture, and they reveal a great deal about the whole way of life of a society.

Consider the toothbrush. It would be possible for people to clean their teeth with a found object such as a twig or leaf, or even with a finger. Ancient peoples often used a special chew stick, a twig with a frayed end. The bristled toothbrush was invented in 15th-century China and spread across Europe and into the United States, where it began to be mass produced in the late 19th century. Drugstores now feature many styles of toothbrush with an array of special features. Specialized teams design, manufacture, and market this wide variety of toothbrushes to consumers. Parents buy toothbrushes for their children and teach them the conventional techniques for brushing their teeth (little circles, two minutes, etc.). As adults, people often isolate themselves in a special room to brush their teeth in privacy. Even so, toothbrushing is a profoundly social act, relying on shared knowledge and observance of social norms for hygiene and health.

Trees, rocks, microbes, and planets are all material objects, but they are not material culture unless they are made and used by humans in group contexts. For instance, a tree growing in a natural forest is not an object of material culture. However, an apple tree can be material culture if it is planted by a farmer in an orchard designed to produce fruit for human consumption. An old oak tree becomes material culture if it becomes culturally (perhaps ritually) significant. Note that this might happen with or without creating any evidence for future archaeologists to uncover.

This rock is on display in the British Museum. While a rock is not in and of itself material culture, this rock, which carries special meaning for those who view it, is. (credit: Archaeomoonwalker/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)

On display in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is a gray rock. This rock was simply found by humans and never shaped for any particular use. Sitting there in the museum, it has no specific purpose other than to serve as an object of popular contemplation. Though it is a fairly unremarkable lump of basalt, thousands of people stop to gaze at this rock, reading the sign that describes how it was obtained, marveling at its presence there in the museum. Why? What’s so interesting about a rock? This particular rock was collected by astronauts on the Apollo 12 mission to the moon. The rock serves as evidence of this magnificent feat of scientific engineering and a source of great pride to the culture that accomplished such a mission. We go to museums to view the items on display there, but clearly, the human activities surrounding those objects are what make them interesting to us. That is, culture is not just material objects—it’s also what we do and what we think.

Artefacts, Ecofacts, and Features

As noted in the introduction to chapter 4, archaeological evidene includes three types of material culture. These are artefacts, ecofacts, and features.

• Artefacts (also spelled artifacts) are portable items that were made and used by humans. This may include ceramic pots, stone and bone tools, metal objects, etc. In 100 years, the computer used to type this text will also be considered an “artifact.”
• Ecofacts are natural objects that have been used or moved by humans. This might include the bones of animals that were eaten or the remains of trees that were planted in a garden. The banana peel you might throw in the trash could be an ecofact, as could the bulb of the tulips in people’s yards. Both are natural but would not have gotten where they are without human activity.
• Features are larger, non-portable human creations. A house or other structure could be a feature, but so could a fire pit. We can learn about past human activity by looking at the creation and placement of that fire pit, but we can’t take this feature back to the lab for further analysis without destroying it.

Analyzing Material Culture

In the next chapter, we will work backwards and look more closely at how 'sites' form and how archaeologists excavate and interpret them. For the time being, we will take a look at some of the ways archaeologists analyze individual types of artefacts, ecofacts, and features. These forms of evidence and their analysis work together to create a full picture of a broader archaeological site and context.

Lithic Analysis

The word "lithic" come from the Greek lithos and means "stone." Lithic tools and their by-products are among the most commonly recovered artifacts from archaeological sites, in large part because these artifacts are imperishable. As a result, lithic artifacts are also the oldest known artifacts in the world. Archaeologists generally divide stone tools into two types: flaked stone tools and groundstone tools. Flaked stone tools are made from chert or obsidian, or other fine-grained lithic materials that have a predictable fracture pattern. When a chunk of this material (called a core) is struck in a particular way with a stone or a piece of antler or wood (called a hammer), a flake is produced. Flakes could used as tools due to their sharp edges or were further modified into other tools. Sometimes the core was also shaped into a particular tool. Two of the most recognizable flaked stone tools are spear or arrow points that were hafted onto the ends of sticks or canes. Groundstone tools, on the other hand, are made from sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic rock and are shaped by pecking or grinding. Some groundstone tools were used to grind or pound seeds, nuts, and other plant material or minerals for pigments or paints; others were shaped into axes, plummets, or ornaments. Common groundstone tools in the Americas are the mano and the metate, which were used together to grind seeds or maize.

Archaeologists who analyze lithic artifacts begin by sorting them into flaked and groundstone objects. They then further divide the two subgroups of artifacts into different artifact types. The two most basic types of flaked stone artifacts are débitage (pronounced deb-eh-taj) and tools, categories that are then further broken down into more specific subcategories. Subcategories of débitage include flakes, cores, and shatter; subcategories of these tools include arrow or spear points, knives, and scrapers. Specific types of groundstone artifacts are generally more varied. Some more common types are manos, metates, abraders, hammerstones, anvils, and fire-cracked rock. When the artifacts in an assemblage are divided into the desired groups, they are further classified by material type and then are counted and weighted.

A common type of flaked tool analysis is examining débitage, or the waste produced when making a flaked stone tool. Débitage can help archaeologists determine the kinds of tools that were made at a particular archaeological site. Common types of débitage include flakes, shatter, and cores. A flake is thin piece of lithic material with certain morphological characteristics such as a bulb of percussion, a striking platform, and sharp edges. Shatter refers to the blocky fragments of stone material created from the hammer crushing the parent material during the flaking process. Cores are the original nodules of parent material from which tools were created.

Microwear (or use-wear) analysis is a way to understand exactly how flaked stone tools were used. This process involves replicating the flaked stone tool, using it in specific ways (e.g., cutting, scraping, piercing, or drilling) on specific materials (e.g., wood, bone, plants, or animal hide or meat), examining microscopic wear patterns on the used edge of the tool, and comparing the use wear on the replicated tool to the evidence of wear on tools recovered from archaeological contexts.

Lithic analysts almost always try to identify the geographic location, or source, from which lithic material was obtained to make stone tools. Sometimes this can be done by macroscopic comparisons of the material type to raw sources obtained from certain locations. In other cases, a microscopic analysis of the crystals or a chemical analysis of the composition of a material is necessary to determine its source.

Lithics associated with "Ötzi the Iceman." (Source: CC-BY-SA: Wierer, U., Arrighi, S., Bertola, S., Kaufmann, G., Baumgarten, B., Pedrotti, A., Pernter, P. and Pelegrin, J.; Wikimedia Commons)

Bone & Shell Artefacts

After lithics, bone tools are the oldest found in the archaeological record, dating back at least 1.5 million to 2 million years ago. Bone and shell can be chipped, cut, ground, or polished into a number of different forms. Common bone tools include hoes and other agricultural implements; scrapers or other tools for processing food; fishhooks; weaving tools, awls, needles, or other sewing equipment; musical instruments (e.g., flutes); and jewelry, beads, or other adornments.

There are two parts to analyzing artifacts made of shell and bone. First, an archaeologist considers the same sorts of attributes that are recorded for any artifact—the size and shape of the tool, the techniques used to manufacture the tool, the style or type of the tool, and any microwear. These data can help us better understand the technology of tool production and the context of its use. For example, more than 60 bone tools that were found in the Contrebandiers Cave in Morocco show evidence of being used for clothing manufacture approximately 120,000 years ago. Archaeologists made this determination because the style and use wear are consistent with tools used for working with leather and fur in other contexts. Likewise, studies of the marks on bone tools dating to about 35,000 years ago from the Kimberley region in Australia show that they were used for a variety of purposes, including crafting items from plant fiber and resin and for hunting and fishing.

In addition to analyzing tool technology, archaeologists also examine the bone itself. They try to identify the skeletal element (specific bone) from which the tool is made as well as the species of the animal it came from. If there is minimal modification (as with the scapula of a large mammal used as a hoe), it may be relatively easy to ascertain the species. However, if the bone has been extensively shaped and polished (as with a point, needle, or fishhook), it may be nearly impossible to identify the species from visual examination alone. Newer techniques can analyze biomarkers in the bone to identify the species of origin. When some species are overrepresented or underrepresented in the tool assemblage, that may provide information about crafting choices or ritual associations between particular tools and particular animals. Likewise, if a bone or shell artifact is made from a species that is not local, this can inform archaeologists’ understanding of travel and/or trade routes. For example, the presence of marine shell beads, gorgets, shell cups, and other prestige artifacts in higher-status households and ritual contexts at the site of Cahokia (in what is the state of Illinois today) show that high-status people there were connected to the Gulf Coast through complex trade routes.

A fragment of a bone flute. (Source: CC-0, Yale University Art Gallery, Wikimedia Commons)

Ceramics

Unlike stone and bone tools, ceramics are not found in the archaeological record until after the evolution of modern Homo sapiens. However, once they appear in the record, they are often among the most common artifacts. Archaeologically, ceramic refers to any material that humans made out of clay and fired. Ceramics are uniquely useful to archaeological investigations because pots and other fired-clay objects are found around the world and preserve remarkably well. Although they break, they do not decompose, and broken potsherds are not often collected by looters. Moreover, because they are ordinary, daily-use artifacts, ceramics are found in a variety of contexts and thus can inform archaeologists about many activities related to how they were used and made.

For a potter in ancient times, the first step to making pottery was finding and preparing the clay. Although clay occurs naturally, in order to make a high-quality pot, it is necessary to remove unwanted particles and add in more desirable additives, known as temper. A skilled potter knows that different kinds and quantities of temper prepare the clay for different uses. For example, a pot for cooking may be created with a rougher temper, which allows it to heat and cool more effectively without cracking.

Clay can be molded in a variety of different ways: by pinching a ball into the desired shape, using the coil method, using a mold, building with slabs, and so forth. Different techniques for forming the vessel may be practical, but they can also reflect cultural or stylistic preferences. Likewise, changes may result from the introduction of new technology such as the pottery wheel. Once the basic form of a vessel is made, secondary or decorative forming techniques may be added before it is fired. Techniques may include beating, scraping, smoothing, burnishing, and polishing. Decorative motifs may be cut, carved, or molded onto the vessel. The surface may be covered with slip, glaze, or painted decoration.

Firing techniques also vary by cultural group and chronological period. If you have taken a ceramics class, you probably fired your pieces in an enclosed kiln, which provides a controlled, even heating environment. However, it is possible to create pottery without a kiln. In an open-fire method, the pots are mixed with the fuels on the surface of the ground or in a small pit and then burned. Because it is more difficult to control the atmosphere, careful placement prior to firing is necessary to ensure an even heating environment. Even under ideal conditions, some pots will crack, break, collapse, or fire unevenly, depending on the combination of the heating atmosphere, the rate of heating, and the maximum temperature.

An understanding of the basics of pottery manufacture helps archaeologists analyze the resulting ceramics. The ceramics that have survived in the archaeological record are often broken or have been deposited in a refuse pit. Archaeologists work back from the discarded artifact to better understand the context of its use and creation. Different approaches to archaeological analysis include an analysis of form and function, a stylistic analysis, or a characterization study. The kinds of analyses an archaeologist employs depend on the particular research question she is asking. Many investigations require multiple analyses.

The shape and form of an artifact can give us some clues about its function or how it was used. In some cases this may seem obvious—a pitcher is clearly used for pouring liquid, while a large pot with burn marks must have been used for cooking. In other cases, however, the function of a vessel is not as clear. The first step in this sort of analysis is to create a typology, grouping like objects together with like. This is the sort of thing you probably do without thinking about it when you organize dishes in a kitchen: you put the plates on one shelf, the cups on another, and so forth. However, the sorting process becomes trickier when you are organizing items for which you lack cultural context. The people who used the pottery may have had a different classification system than the archaeologists who are studying it. In addition, it’s important to remember that the same pot may have been used for different purposes over the course of its use life, making simple categorization even more difficult. Even so, it is usually possible to roughly divide any collection into vessels used for storage, for cooking or food processing or for serving or for transfer. From there, additional sorting will depend on the collection. Archaeologists consider a number of attributes, including the shape of the rim, the base, or the handles; the dimensions of the rim or base; the thickness of the vessel walls; the compactness of the clay; the color; the firing environment; the presence of specific paste inclusions; the type of finish; the presence of glaze or wash; and any signs of use wear.

In addition, archaeologists may consider stylistic attributes that do not contribute to the function of the vessel. Style is often seen as a proxy for cultural identity. Shared styles may indicate a close social relationship among cultures, while abrupt stylistic changes may indicate some sort of change in social or political organization. Archaeologists may record specific elements or motifs that appear on different pots and consider how they change over time and between sites. At the same time, an old archaeological adage warns against confusing pots for people. It means that we need to be careful about methodological approaches that focus only on the artifact without considering what the people who created it were trying to communicate. For example, while Iron Age ceramic styles in southern Africa were traditionally interpreted primarily as markers of ethnicity, ethnohistoric and ethnoarchaeological studies show that pottery is more complex when considered through the various lenses of production, distribution, and engagement with different social networks. Archaeologists need to recognize that pots and other ceramic vessels are mobile objects and that their styles are a form of communication over both time (as novice potters learn from their elders and from experimentation) and space (as people move, vessels are traded, and pots are used in different contexts over their use life).

An example of ceramic artefacts. (Source: CC-0, Wikimedia Commons)

Archaeometallurgy

The study of metal in archaeological contexts is known as archaeometallurgy. While metal artifacts are relatively rare at older sites, they became increasingly important over time. Metal technologies have traditionally been used to categorize past societies (bronze age, iron age), although some of these typologies can be problematic.

The oldest metal artifacts that archaeologists have recovered were made from native metals that were formed into decorative bangles, necklaces, bracelets, and other ornamental objects, either through cold hammering or by melting the metal and shaping it with a mold. Metal alloys were later independently developed in many different locations across the world to serve a variety of different purposes. Bronze, for example, is a copper alloy, which is harder and stronger than copper alone. The first alloys mixed copper with arsenic, but true bronze requires tin. The earliest known tin bronze was found in what is Serbia today and dates to about 6,500 years ago; other early tin bronze is found across the Near East that dates to about 5,000 years ago. Bronze artifacts include axes and spears as well as artistic and/or ritual objects. In Europe and the Near East there was a shift to iron beginning around 3,000 years ago—and earlier in some regions—as new technology enabled furnaces to get hot enough to effectively reduce iron ore into iron metal.

Just as with any other material, an archaeologist studying metal artifacts would record their basic attributes—size, shape, weight, use wear, and so forth. However, archaeometallurgists are also specifically interested in determining the specific type of metal that was used. This may begin with a visual examination, looking at aspects such as weight, density, hardness, color, corrosion, and magnetism. For example, iron is magnetic but silver is not, and aluminum is lighter than many other metals. However, more precise investigation may require chemical analysis such as X-ray spectroscopy or mass spectrometry. Elemental analysis of the chemical composition of the metal can help to determine the precise composition of alloys as well as the source of the metals.

This can be important in developing understandings of the technological process that different metalworkers followed at different times and in different places and can also be used to investigate systems of trade and exchange of ideas. For example, in her research into the complex metallurgical technologies of the South American Andes, Heather Lechtman has used elemental analysis to identify the geographical sources used in Andean bronzewear and to investigate changes over time and space.

Archaeometallurgy is also apployed alongside other methods to date and further analyze coins. Shown here is an Iron Age Copper alloy Celtic coin. (Source: CC-BY-SA, The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum, Wikimedia Commons)

Textiles

Although stone tools are the oldest surviving human-made artifacts, early humans likely relied first on organic tools—such as those made from leaves, wood, bone, or shell—which rarely endure in the archaeological record due to their perishable nature. Among these, textiles are especially unlikely to survive. Textiles are made from either plant-based cellulose fibers or animal-based protein fibers. Plant fibers may come from stems (bast fibers like flax, hemp, and nettle) or seeds (such as cotton), while animal fibers include wool, hair, and silk. Wool and hair can be gathered without killing the animal, a practice linked to domestication. Textile production begins with flexible strands, whether natural or processed; processing methods like beating or steaming soften fibers but also make them decay faster. When twisted, these fibers form cords or strings that can be woven into fabrics combining flexibility and rigidity, allowing the material to be folded or rolled for storage.

Both cordage and spun thread are made by twisting the fibers. The difference is in how the short fibers are joined to make longer lengths. Cordage has spliced joins (bundles of fibers that are overlapped in groups), while yarn has a continuous overlap of fibers. However, those details are difficult to see, especially when looking at fragmentary artifacts. The fibers can be twisted together in two directions, referred to as “S” and “Z.” These initial strands can then be used as is or they can be twisted around each other to form plied yarns. The number of plies can vary significantly, but most archaeological textiles are made either with single strands or with two or three plies of fiber that are twisted for strength. Careful examination of a textile (or a cast of the textile in mud or clay) can help determine the structure of the yarn or cord used to make it.

A tiny fragment of a three-ply cord associated with a Neanderthal Levallois flake has recently been found in a context dated 41,000–52,000 years ago (Hardy et al., 2020). This is one of the earliest pieces of direct evidence for textiles. Indirect evidence can be seen in wear patterns on bone or shell ornaments (indicating that they were suspended and used as a bead). Because of their fragile nature, textiles rarely survive to be found in the archaeological record. Most that are found are highly fragmentary.

The ideal conditions for textile preservation are cool, dark, and dry (such as a tomb or a dry cave), but textiles can occasionally preserve in a variety of relatively extreme situations. These include anaerobic wet conditions, freezing temperatures, or sites with specific chemical profiles. Textiles from flax and other bast fibers have been found in the sediments at the bottom of lakes and in marshy sites, while protein fibers (wool, hair, silk, and leather) have been found in the highly acidic conditions of peat bogs. Textiles can also survive when partially burned (carbonized), when encased in salts from the corrosion of metal, or when the soils that surround an item are particularly high in salts. Fabrics made of two different fibers (such as flax and wool) can have “voids” where one of the fibers preserves and the other decays. Depending on circumstances, this can either help or hinder the interpretation.

Trace evidence can be studied even when the fabrics themselves have disappeared. Impressions of fabric structures can be found pressed into mud floors or clay pots that later hardened, preserving a record of the structure. These impressions can be studied for clues to the structures of the fabrics. Other evidence of textiles can be found in the tool kits of the makers. Spindle whorls have been found in many sites around the world. These are bead-like weights for the spindles that are used to spin yarn. They come in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and materials and can be reflective of that kind of thread or yarn that was being produced. Some whorls are made of repurposed broken pottery, while others are clearly made as spindle whorls. Weights made of fired clay or stone indicate the use of a warp-weighted loom. As with spindle whorls, the loom weights vary in size, shape, and weight and can provide hints about the fabric woven on the loom. Because loom weights can be similar to weights used for other purposes such as fishing, they are usually identified from context. Bone awls for poking holes in hides or other materials, bone or wood needles for sewing or nalbinding, and a variety of beaters to manipulate threads on a loom can all be used to demonstrate the presence of textiles even when the textiles themselves don’t survive.

Grave goods associated with a child mummy (Egyptian). The rope fragments are made of twisted plant fibers and the sandals are made from leather. Note that this photograph includes a centimeter scale and an array of colors and shades of grey; this is a standardized panel that researhers can use to correct archaeological photographs when their analysis relies on true-to-life color. (Source: CC-0, Museo Egizio In Turin, Italy. Wikimedia Commons)

Ethnoarchaeology & Experimental Archaeology

Whether studying lithics, bone tools, ceramics, textiles, foodways, or metals, archaeologists use a variety of techniques to help test their hypotheses. One approach is to look at the ethnographic record for accounts of technologies in action. This is known as ethnoarchaeology. By comparing the evidence left behind by living peoples engaged in these techniques to peoples alive today and across cultural groups, it is possible to better interpret the archaeological record. Another method is to attempt to replicate the technologies seen in the archaeological record and compare the results with evidence from archaeology. This is experimental archaeology.

Ethnoarchaeology studies how living peoples interact with their environments and uses that knowledge to help interpret the past. Keep in mind, though, that living cultures are not some kind of “primitive” relic of the past. While different peoples have developed different technologies, we are all equally human. All human cultures change and adapt to their current situations, and no human culture is any more developed than any other, a fact that must be remembered when creating a research design. That said, ethnoarchaeology has the potential to contribute to archaeological understanding as long as archaeologists are careful and reflexive. Sometimes, ethnoarchaeology leads to unexpected discoveries, and sometimes it simply serves as a reminder that not everything will show up in the archaeological record. For example, in her work with the Pumé people of Venezuela, Pei-Lin Yu found that sting-ray spines had ritual uses that would be hard to predict by archaeologists who simply found the item at a site.

Experimental archaeology is a way of understanding the past through the replication of artifacts and the techniques used to construct them. Experimental archaeologists analyze and interpret technologies from the archaeological past and attempt to recreate and use them to answer specific questions. They look at the process of manufacture and the waste products that result from that manufacture. They also look at how the artifact is used and analyze wear and breakage patterns. Public outreach in archaeology, which can include television programs, historical reenactments, and living-history interpretations, often include an element of experimental archaeology. In these contexts, the term “experimental archaeology” is rarely used. Instead, the practice is often described as “hands-on history” or “bringing the past to life” (although both of these terms are misleading).

There are two main aspects of experimental archaeology. The first has to do with the replication of artifacts or (in some cases) entire structures or sites. This involves developing an understanding of the techniques used to acquire the materials and to manufacture an artifact or to construct a site. The second is to use the artifact or site to better understand its function. This allows better interpretation of archaeological finds through analyses of breakage and wear patterns. For instance, an experimental archaeologist may start by creating a replica of a flint blade found at an archaeological site. This provides a basic understanding of the specific artifact and its construction. To better understand stone blades as an artifact type, the next step would be to make a number of replicas and use them to cut a variety of materials. This allows the experimenter to develop an understanding of how the shape of the tool affects its effectiveness. By then examining the wear on the cutting edges of the artifact and the replicas, it may be possible to determine the function of the original artifact.

'Flint knapping' (making stone tools by the process of "lithic reduction"—intentionally striking pieces of rock to remove flakes) is a common form of experimental archaeology used to produce new data used in lithic analysis (as described above). (Source: CC-BY, Wikitarisch, Wikimedia Commons)

Zooarchaeology & Paleoethnobotany

Animal and plant remains found at archaeological sites provide important insights about past human behavior and how humans interacted with their environment. The evidence obtained can tell us about past dietary practices, what environments were like in the past, how and when plants and animals were first domesticated, foraging strategies, and how plant and animal resources were used for medicines, tools, and ritual items. Analysis of past animal and plant remains are two specialized fields in archaeological research.

Zooarchaeology is the study of animal (zoology) remains from prehistoric and historic archaeological sites. The overall goal of zooarchaeological research is to develop a better understanding of how past peoples interacted with their environment, specifically with animals (fauna). Zooarchaeology is an interdisciplinary field of study that combines zoology and archaeology, with an emphasis on the latter. Fields such as ecology, biology, osteology, taphonomy, animal husbandry, and various others also contribute to zooarchaeological studies. Zooarchaeological or faunal remains are a reflection of past human behavior and living strategies. Analyzing animal remains from archaeological deposits can provide a wealth of information about how past peoples lived—not just their behavior but also their impact on the environment they lived in.

Paleoethnobotany is the study of how people (ethno) used plants (botany) in the past (paleo), or how people interacted with and impacted their environment through the use, manipulation, and consumption of plants. Paleoethnobotany can be used to understand many things: what plants people ate, how people acquired plant foods, how people prepared plants for consumption, the origins of agriculture, what the environment was like at the site, and so on. Fields such as botany, ecology, agronomy, and soil science also greatly inform paleoethnobotanical studies.

Faunal and floral remains used by prehistoric and historic peoples represent specialized material culture obtained from the living biotic environment (ecofacts) and as such are often subsumed under the category of environmental archaeology. Obtaining data during floral and faunal analysis is only the initial step in the process of addressing research questions in archaeological studies. In order to gather significant information from faunal and floral remains, it is necessary to examine in some detail the methods and techniques employed.

Zooarchaeological faunal analysis focuses on the study of preserved faunal or animal remains recovered from archaeological sites. Typically, the preserved remains consist of the hard parts of an animal such as bones, teeth, antler, shell, and scales. But also keep in mind that the category “faunal” includes more than the bones of mammals and other vertebrates; it also includes other parts of these animals such as scales, eggshells, rattles, and so on. Invertebrate animal parts may also survive in the archaeological record, such as remains of mollusks, echinoderms, and even arthropods. Depending on various taphonomic factors, a representative sample of animal remains may preserve over time, forming a zooarchaeological or faunal assemblage for a particular site. Soft items (e.g., hair, skin, muscle, and marrow) only rarely preserve in the archaeological record, in settings such as unusually anoxic wet (e.g., peat bog) or arid (e.g., dry cave) conditions. During analysis, archaeologists examine each faunal remain or specimen individually and record a series of characteristic traits and conditions. This initial step focuses on identifying elements and taxonomy: essentially, identifying the part of the animal as well as the type of animal represented by each specimen. Archaeologists use the information they obtain in this process to develop a zooarchaeological profile of the assemblage, which they can then use to address research questions regarding the human behavior that created the assemblage.

The analysis of zooarchaeological remains begins with recognizing and identifying specimens. Each piece of bone or shell is examined individually and compared to known specimens, either in a comparative collection or in reference manuals. A faunal comparative collection consists of elements from individual animals, all properly cleaned and labeled, that can be used to help an archaeologist identify typically fragmented or incomplete zooarchaeological remains. Reference manuals consist of books, journal articles, and similar publications that provide detailed illustrations (drawings or photographs) of skeletal elements that can be used to identify a specimen. In general, comparative collections are preferable to reference manuals. It is often difficult to obtain the precision necessary to accurately recognize small, distinct traits visible on skeletal elements through drawings or photographs. In addition, many skeletal remains can be quite small, making them difficult to illustrate. Finally, no reference manuals exist that contain detailed illustrations of every bone from every animal found in a given region.

A giant clam excavated from a midden (the archeaological term for a garbage heap) of shells. Dated to 2,800 years ago, this midden in Bourewa, Fiji shows these clams disappeared about this time. (Source: CC-BY-SA, Patrick Nunn, Wikimedia Commons)

A drawer at the Archaeozoology Reference Laboratory of the Dutch Heritage Agency containing the tibias (shin bones) of many species. Sample collections like these are used for reference to identify ecofacts and artefacts made of bone. (Source: CC-BY-SA, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Wikimedia Commons)

Paleoethnobotany is usually split into two methods of analysis based on the size and type of plant remains being studied: macrobotanical analysis and microbotanical analysis. Macrobotanicalanalysis deals with plant remains such as carbonized seeds and plant parts that you can see with your eyes or with the aid of a low-powered microscope. Microbotanical analysis deals with plant remains that you can see only with the aid of a high-powered microscope, such as pollen, starch, and phytoliths. Starch, a semicrystalline carbohydrate produced by plants, is helpful for plant identification because of morphological (shape and size) variation between different families and genera of plants. Phytoliths are made of silica (glass, or sand) and help give plants structure by forming in between cell walls when plants take up silica from groundwater. As with starch, phytoliths can be identified to plant family or genera based on their unique shape and size. Starches are found in carbohydrate-rich plants such as beans, tubers, maize, and cereal grains, while phytoliths are found in greater quantities in the grass family. In fact, many grasses feel rough to the touch because of phytoliths. Pollen is a fine powder that plants make when they reproduce. Plant and tree pollen is dispersed by the wind and settles into soil or on top of bodies of water, such as lakes, where it falls to the bottom and accumulates in the sediment over time. Archaeologists can take core samples of the sediment to investigate changes in pollen type and abundance throughout time. Pollen morphology is also unique to families and genera.

Paleoethnobotanical analysis begins with sampling from a field site. Depending on whether an analyst will be doing macrobotanical or microbotanical recovery, these samples can range from soil to residues on artifacts to dental calculus. Macrobotanical data are derived almost entirely from plant remains found in soil (except for the cases where botanical remains are desiccated or preserved in waterlogged contexts), while microbotanical data can be derived from remains isolated from both microbotanical and macrobotanical sampling methods.

Shanidar cave where a number of Neanderthal skeletons were discovered. Microfloral analysis revealed whole clumps of pollen in addition to the usual pollen found throughout the site and suggested that entire flowering plants (or at least heads of plants) had entered the grave deposit. This has led some paleo-archaelogists to conclude that flowers were deposited in the cave as part of intentional burial practice. (Source: CC-BY-SA, Khoshhat, Wikimedia Commons)

Other common sources for collecting microbotanical data include dental calculus and residues on artifacts and dental calculus. Dental calculus is mineralized plaque that accumulates in layers on teeth, collected from both animal and human remains using a sanitized dental pick or sonicating toothbrush in a lab setting. Microbotanical analysis of dental calculus can give paleoethnobotanists direct information about what a person was eating, unlike the previous methods mentioned, which are only secondary sources of information about diet or how people were using plants in their day-to-day life. Residues include the remains of carbonized food from the inside of ceramic sherds, absorbed material from a ceramic sherd, or material from the cutting edges of lithics. Residues from ceramic sherds can tell archaeologists what people were cooking or storing in ceramic vessels, while residues from lithics can tell archaeologists what people were cutting with these tools. These residues are typically collected in the lab using a sanitized sonicating toothbrush. Pollen data are recovered by taking a soil core from lake sediment and sampling each stratigraphic level. Pollen is used to reconstruct ancient environments.

Wood is one of the most ubiquitous botanical remains a paleoethnobotanist will come across in both the field and the laboratory due to its abundant use as a source of fuel and shelter. Wood is primarily encountered as wood charcoal that has been preserved by fire through incomplete burning, either accidentally or intentionally. In rarer cases, at sites with extreme weather conditions a paleoethnobotanist may encounter wood samples that are waterlogged or desiccated. Because wood charcoal is often highly fragmented and it would be impossible to know whether the wood in your sample is from one branch or ten, it is only ever weighed rather than counted. In addition, data for wood charcoal is only recorded at the 2 mm fraction and above since these data are representative of the entire sample. The small amounts of charcoal remaining in the other, smaller fractions are negligible.

Archaeologists (particularly those who deal with sites formed within the last thousand years or so) are sometimes lucky enough to encounter larger pieces of intact wood including rings. In these cases, they can turn to dendrochronology: the science of dating events, environmental change, and archaeological artifacts by using the characteristic patterns of annual growth rings in timber and tree trunks. Shown here are dendrochronology samples from archaeological excavations at Grodziec Castle in Poland. (Source: CC-BY-SA, Silar, Wikimedia Commons)

Seeds are the primary material paleoethnobotanists use to answer anthropological questions regarding past peoples’ foodways, environment, economy, and more. All seeds 1 mm and larger, both whole and broken, are counted and weighed. Generally, seeds below 1 mm in size are counted only if they are whole, although counting practices may vary by project. Seeds smaller than 1 mm are not weighed because they are too light to register on the scale; for these seeds, archaeologists record only count data.

When identifying seeds, it is important to identify distinct morphological features such as size, general shape, surface texture, appearance of the fractured seed compared to the appearance of the whole seed, and more. Much of this knowledge will come from analyzing samples with a skilled graduate student or professor and by comparing the appearance of the sample to online, printed, and physical reference collections.

Zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical material provide direct evidence for the diet of prehistoric and historic people. Although faunal and floral remains that are recovered do not reflect all of the food refuse people discarded in the past, they provide a sample of what people were eating. This information provides important insight into how animals and plants were processed for consumption and how human dietary strategies changed over time. Not all faunal and floral remains recovered, however, represent food refuse.

The types of animals and plants recovered at an archaeological site can provide insight into the hunting and foraging practices a site’s inhabitants used. Certain faunal and floral species are available or abundant only at certain times of the year and human foragers likely optimized their efforts by focusing on those taxa only when they were likely to yield high returns. For example, nut trees such as oaks produce ripe acorns only in the fall, so foraging groups likely scheduled their seasonal travels so that they were close to oak forests during the autumn months. Likewise, these same mobile foragers might have planned to camp near large lakes or rivers in the spring, when spawning fish were in the shallows and could be caught more easily. By recognizing the time of year when different taxa are available, archaeologists can often determine the seasonality (season of occupation) for a site.

The relative abundance of different animal and plant remains also provides information about foraging behavior. Some hunter-gatherer groups (e.g., big-game hunters) focused their efforts on a select range of large animals, although most groups employed a broad-based subsistence strategy in which they procured a wide array of animals and plants to fulfill their dietary needs. Other groups may have adjusted their foraging strategies on a seasonal basis in order to take advantage of available abundant resources. Agricultural communities, for example, put considerable effort into farming during the spring planting and fall harvest seasons, but during the other seasons they supplemented their diets through hunting, fishing, and foraging.

Zooarchaeological and paleoethnobotanical material can also help archaeologists to identify other foodways and patterns. Archaeological evidence of plant and animal domestication can be traced through physical changes such as increases in seed size and skeletal modifications reflecting selective breeding for desirable traits. Butchery marks on animal bones reveal methods of carcass processing, resource distribution, and even social practices like feasting or tribute, while the types and locations of bones at sites can indicate hunting, transport, and marrow extraction behaviors. The discovery of nonlocal plant and animal remains—such as coastal shells or tropical crops found inland—demonstrates trade networks and the movement of goods, people, and ideas across regions. Beyond food, both plant and animal materials served vital nondietary roles: plants provided wood for tools and structures, fibers for weaving, and substances for medicine, ritual, and intoxication, while animals supplied hides, sinew, feathers, bone, and shell for tools, ornaments, and ceremonial objects. Together, these materials reflect the complexity of ancient human economies, technologies, and symbolic practices.

Osteology and Bioarchaeology (Human Skeletons)

In archaeology, osteology—the study of bones—forms the foundation of bioarchaeology, the discipline that examines human skeletal remains to understand past lives, health, and populations. Once remains are carefully excavated and transported to the lab, bioarchaeologists photograph, document, and inventory each bone before constructing a biological profile. This profile includes estimations of age, sex, ancestry, and stature, along with evidence of disease, stress, or trauma that can reveal aspects of an individual’s life history. Because skeletal remains are often incomplete or poorly preserved, these assessments rely on probability and comparative data drawn from large reference collections. For example, dental eruption patterns can estimate a child’s age within a range, and long bone measurements can suggest stature once sex and ancestry are determined. These methods are population-specific and provide ranges rather than exact determinations.

While osteological analysis in archaeology shares many techniques with forensic anthropology, the latter focuses on modern, often legal, contexts, whereas archaeological osteology deals with much older remains and broader questions about human adaptation and culture. Ethical handling is central to all osteological work: remains must be treated with dignity, analyzed in consultation with descendant communities when possible, and stored using appropriate, non-destructive methods.

Paleodemography

Once a biological profile is generated for a skeleton, bioarchaeologists can begin to assess the data for population-wide patterns. Paleodemography is the study of past population dynamics, including distributions of age and sex through time. Demographic reconstructions focus on vital statistics, such as life expectancy, probability of death at certain ages, mortality rates, and population size and density. Demographic analyses use hazard models, which are nonlinear mathematical functions that represent age-related changes in the risk of dying. Paleodemographers must deal with strong selection bias: not only are they working with the remains of those who did not survive, but they must remember that the vast majority of human remains decompose before archaeologists can recover them. Therefore, what they have they may not fully represent the demographics of the once-living population.

Mortuary Analysis

The dead do not bury themselves; it is the living who perform mortuary rituals for the dead. Mortuary archaeology examines how the living commemorate the dead through burial practices, using grave goods, skeletal remains, and funerary structures to interpret identity, social status, and ritual behavior. Factors such as body position, burial location, container type, interment style, and associated artifacts reveal both individual and cultural beliefs about death. For example, analysis of Burial 99 in Belize showed that Maya rock-shelters functioned as symbolic mortuary spaces—memorial stops along pilgrimage routes that reinforced ancestral memory and political boundaries. Such studies demonstrate how burial placement and ritual use of space reflect broader social, political, and spiritual dimensions of past societies.

Taphonomy

Taphonomy is the study of what happens to a body after death and before its recovery, including decomposition, preservation, and environmental or human influences. Bioarchaeologists use taphonomic analysis to determine time since death, distinguish human from nonhuman modifications, and reconstruct events surrounding death and burial. Both intrinsic factors (like body size, age, and health) and extrinsic factors (such as soil pH, moisture, temperature, and burial conditions) affect how remains decompose and are preserved. Through experimental and actualistic studies—often conducted at “body farms”—scientists simulate decomposition under different conditions to understand how environmental and cultural variables shape what survives archaeologically.

Taphonomic studies have revealed patterns from both natural and cultural processes, such as animal scavenging, water transport, and human burial treatment. Cases like the discovery of Ötzi the Iceman and the identification of Joseph Henry Loveless demonstrate how unique environmental conditions, from alpine ice to cave microclimates, can preserve human remains for centuries. Because these processes vary greatly across contexts, taphonomy provides bioarchaeologists with critical insight into both natural decay and the cultural choices that influence the final resting state of the dead.

Forensic anthropologists use taphonomy to interpret how environmental and human factors affect a body after death, helping them estimate time since death and reconstruct the circumstances surrounding it. By studying decomposition, bone modification, and preservation patterns, they can distinguish between natural processes—like animal scavenging or weathering—and human actions such as trauma or burial practices. Much of this knowledge comes from research conducted at "body farms"—forensic anthropology research facilities, where donated human bodies are placed in controlled outdoor and other real-world simulated environments to observe how variables like temperature, moisture, soil type, and exposure influence decomposition over time. This research is used to solve crimes and come to conclusions following fatal accidents.

Disease, Activity, Stress, and Violence

Paleopathology is the study of ancient diseases through skeletal and dental evidence, allowing researchers to explore how health, activity, environment, and social factors shaped past populations. Skeletal diseases fall into several categories, including trauma, congenital, infectious, circulatory, metabolic, endocrinological, neoplastic, and dental pathologies. (For most fields of modern medicine, there's a forensic or biological archaeological counterpart!) However, interpreting disease in ancient remains is complex, as not all illnesses leave traces on bone, and similar skeletal changes can result from multiple causes. Bioarchaeologists use differential diagnosis to identify probable conditions while recognizing that the absence of lesions does not necessarily indicate good health—a problem known as the osteological paradox. This paradox highlights that individuals showing bone reactions may have survived disease longer, while those without lesions could have died too quickly for bone changes to form.

Modern bioarchaeology expands the concept of health to include physiological stress, or disruptions to the body’s normal balance, which can manifest in bones and teeth when chronic. Yet, because skeletal responses are limited, researchers must interpret disease and stress cautiously. Despite these challenges, studying ancient pathologies provides valuable insights into past epidemics, health inequalities, and human adaptation. For example, comparing historical plagues and modern pandemics like COVID-19 helps illuminate how social structure, environment, and medical practices shape disease patterns—offering lessons for understanding both ancient and contemporary public health.

Mechanically demanding or repetitive activities can leave distinctive traces on the skeleton, offering clues about a person’s lifestyle, occupation, and social position. Because bone is dynamic tissue that responds to mechanical stress, repeated movements can cause either degenerative changes, such as osteoarthritis, or biomechanical adaptations, such as the enlargement of muscle attachment sites known as entheses. These markers, along with others like dental wear and skeletal lesions, help bioarchaeologists infer activity levels and stress experienced during life, though they cannot always be linked to specific tasks. Teeth also preserve evidence of early-life stress through permanent defects such as linear enamel hypoplasia (a developmental defect that affects the enamel, the hard outer layer of teeth), while skeletal features like porotic hyperostosis (the expansion of the bone marrow, resulting in a porous or spongy appearance of the bones) or cribra orbitalia (small, porous holes in the roof of the eye sockets) can indicate childhood anemia or nutritional stress. Overall, these indicators reflect how the body adapted to both physical demands and environmental or social pressures across an individual’s lifetime.

Front view depiction of the shoulder bones: clavicle ("collar bone"), scapula ("shoulder blade"), and humerus (upper arm bone), as well as some ligaments (bone-to-bone soft tissue connections) and tendons (muscle-to-bone connections). Repeated regular use of certain shoulder muscles impacts the formation of the bone specific to those tendon attachments over the individual's lifetime. This drawing comes from the famous anatomical reference book Gray's Anatomy by Henry Gray and illustrated by Henry Vandyke Carter. (Source: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Skeletal evidence of trauma, combined with archaeological and mortuary data, allows bioarchaeologists to reconstruct past violence, whether in the form of warfare, raids, or structural inequalities. Patterns of injury, disease, and malnutrition across social groups can reveal not only interpersonal conflict but also institutionalized forms of harm rooted in social and economic marginalization. Modern investigations can also demonstrate how studying historical trauma can bring justice and visibility to communities affected by violence, showing how the analysis of past suffering can help confront ongoing social injustices.

Growth, Diet, and Development

Bioarchaeologists study growth and development in children to understand how stress and disease affected past populations. By analyzing long bone lengths and widths and bone fusions they can estimate physiological age, while dental eruption provides a more precise chronological age. Stress markers and periosteal reactions allow researchers to examine the impacts of childhood stress on adult health and mortality, revealing how environmental, nutritional, and social factors influenced growth and development in different cultural contexts.

Reconstructing diet provides additional insights into health and development. Bioarchaeologists use plant and animal remains, food residues on tools, and coprolites to study ancient diets, but chemical analyses of stable isotopes in bones and teeth have become a central method. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes reveal dietary sources, while oxygen and strontium isotopes indicate geographic origins and migration. Dental surfaces and calcified plaque (dental calculus) preserve microfossils such as phytoliths, pollen, starch, and even DNA from oral bacteria, enabling direct reconstruction of diet, food processing, and trade networks. For example, cotton fibers in prehistoric dental calculus across North America indicate long-distance trade.

Dietary analysis also illuminates cultural patterns and social organization. Transitions from foraging to farming often altered nutrition, health, and disease patterns, as seen in North American maize consumers with higher rates of dental and infectious disease, whereas rice-consuming agriculturalists in Southeast Asia showed different dental outcomes. Isotopic and dental analyses can also reveal differences by sex, age, social class, or life stage, while migration studies using strontium isotopes, such as research on “vampire” burials in Poland, show that social fears were not necessarily linked to outsiders. By combining growth, diet, and migration studies, bioarchaeologists can reconstruct the lived experiences, health, and cultural practices of past populations.

Feature Analysis

In archaeology, features are non-portable elements of a site that are typically studied in situ, meaning they must be analyzed during excavation or based on data collected rather than removed to a laboratory like artifacts or ecofacts. Features include structures, hearths, postholes, burials, pits, and other modifications to the landscape that provide information about how people organized and used space. Because features cannot be separated from their physical context without destroying them, careful documentation through mapping, photography, stratigraphic recording, and soil analysis is essential. Their spatial relationships to other site components often hold as much interpretive value as the features themselves, helping archaeologists reconstruct the layout and function of ancient activity areas.

Analysis of features begins in the field with the identification of soil color, texture, and inclusions that differentiate natural from cultural deposits. Archaeologists use tools such as color charts to record soil hue and note variations that may indicate past burning, construction, or refuse disposal. In some cases, microscopic or chemical analyses of soil samples—such as phosphate testing or pollen recovery—can further reveal the presence of organic activity or environmental conditions surrounding a feature. The data collected from these analyses help interpret the feature’s function, whether it served as a domestic hearth, a storage pit, or a burial site, and how it relates to broader settlement and subsistence patterns.

Because features are embedded in stratigraphic layers (something we will explore in more detail in the next chapter), their relationship to surrounding deposits is key to understanding site chronology and human behavior. Stratigraphic profiles allow archaeologists to identify sequences of construction, destruction, reuse, and abandonment. For example, overlapping postholes might indicate successive rebuilding of structures in the same location, while filled-in pits can suggest intentional decommissioning of spaces. The spatial arrangement and density of features can reveal social organization, including distinctions between domestic and ceremonial areas or elite and commoner spaces. In this sense, features serve as physical records of human choices and cultural routines that shaped the lived environment.

Excavated Hohokam pit house depicting hearth and post holes. (Source: CC-BY-SA, Richard N Horne, Wikimedia Commons)

Finally, interpreting features requires an integrative approach that combines data with information from artifacts, ecofacts, and historical or ethnographic records. Hearths may be studied alongside charcoal and faunal remains to reconstruct cooking practices, while burial features are analyzed with skeletal and artifact evidence to infer ritual or social identity. Advances in remote sensing and 3D modeling have further enhanced the study of features by allowing archaeologists to digitally preserve and visualize them for future analysis. In sum, while artifacts and ecofacts reveal what people made and used, features capture the places and activities that structured their daily lives, offering a spatial and contextual foundation for interpreting the human past.

Conclusion

This chapter has explored the methods archaeologists use to analyze material culture—the physical traces of human activity preserved in the archaeological record. From lithic tools and ceramics to bone artifacts and textiles, from plant and animal remains to human skeletal evidence, each category of material culture requires specialized analytical approaches. Whether examining the microscopic wear patterns on a stone blade, the chemical composition of ancient bronze, or the isotopic signatures in human teeth, archaeologists employ rigorous scientific techniques to extract meaningful information from physical remains. These analyses reveal what ancient peoples made and used, how they lived, what they ate, how they organized their societies, and how they understood their world.

By studying artifacts (portable objects made by humans), ecofacts (natural materials used or modified by humans), and features (non-portable structures and modifications to the landscape), archaeologists can reconstruct detailed pictures of past human behavior, technology, subsistence practices, health, and social organization.

The methods described in this chapter—from lithic and ceramic analysis to zooarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, and bioarchaeology—demonstrate that archaeology is an interdisciplinary science. Understanding ancient pottery requires knowledge of chemistry, geology, and art history. Interpreting animal bones draws on zoology, ecology, and anatomy. Analyzing human remains integrates medicine, genetics, and social theory. Even approaches like ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology show how archaeologists must look beyond the archaeological record itself, drawing on observations of living peoples and hands-on replication of ancient techniques to test their interpretations. This integration of multiple fields and methods allows archaeologists to approach the same evidence from different angles, building more complete and nuanced understandings of the past while acknowledging the limitations and biases inherent in any single approach.

However, it is important to remember that artifacts, ecofacts, and features do not exist in isolation. The Apollo moon rock gains its cultural significance not from its physical properties alone, but from its context—where it came from, who collected it, and what it represents to the society that values it. Similarly, all archaeological materials derive their meaning from their relationships to each other and to the deposits in which they are found. A ceramic pot tells us something about ancient technology and aesthetics, but its location within a house, its association with particular food remains, and its position in a stratigraphic layer tell us about daily life, diet, social practices, and chronology. The next chapter will examine how archaeologists approach this crucial concept of context: how sites form, how archaeologists excavate them while preserving contextual information, and how spatial and temporal relationships between different elements of material culture allow us to interpret not just individual objects, but entire cultural systems and ways of life.