1. Artifact Analysis http://www.newworldtreasures.com/cointypes.htm http://car.utsa.edu/Volunteer/Labandcurationvolopps.htm

2. What are artifacts? • Portable objects made, modified, or used by human beings. Why analyze artifacts? • Artifacts allow us to reconstruct the activities of people in the past.

3. An Archaeological Project • Research Design • Fieldwork • Lab work • Reporting Results

4. Expected Student Learning Outcomes: • In this class students will undertake basic visual analysis of three artifact classes; • develop and undertake a research design for analyzing existing collections; • and display their findings in a clear and concise manner, both in a written report and an oral presentation.

5. 1) Weekly Labs 50% 2) Quizzes 20% 4) Final Project 30%

6. Final Project • The final project consists of two parts: • A written report that will include a statement of research objectives (50 points), results of analysis (100 points), and interpretations (50 points). The report will follow a standardized template. 2) An oral presentation (50 points) of the study and its findings. This presentation will be a professional quality presentation.

7. Vocabulary • Sites – a place where human activity took place. • Features – non portable objects made, modified, or used by human beings. • Artifacts – portable objects made, modified, or used by human beings. • Ecofact – unmodified plant or animal remains resulting from human activity. • Assemblage – all of the artifacts and ecofacts from a given site or context within a site.

8. Site Feature Artifacts and Ecofacts

9. Context and Provenience Provenience - exact location of something. • Units….excavation or collection areas of the site. • Strata….natural or cultural layers of the unit. • Levels….arbitrary division of strata. Context – the relationship between objects and places.

10. Units http://proteus.brown.edu/greekpast/4782 http://www.elkrunchurch.org/tag/archaeology/page/2/ Strata

11. Provenience Numbers • Every artifact is associated with a provenience number. A code to where it comes from. Example: WV650-12-7, this is a provenience number identifying artifacts as coming from West Virginia site number 650, unit number 12, stratum number 7. • Systems for numbering artifacts vary considerably. Make sure you understand the system used for the collection your are working with. • This number assures that all artifacts from the same provenience are kept together and considered as a group during analysis.

12. Context http://weymouthreliefroad.wordpress.com/page/23/?archives-list=1 http://www.flickriver.com/places/United+Kingdom/England/Cliffs+End/ How would the story you tell about a single skeleton differ depending on which of these contexts the body was found in?