Archaeological Techniques, Modern Day

Tools and Techniques

Excavation tools include not only small handheld trowels and dental picks, but also backhoes and heavy equipment that—in skilled hands—can be very effective in removing tons of overlying debris.

Three-dimensional recording of excavated features is achieved through electronic theodolites (also known as total stations) or global-positioning systems (GPS). Researchers frequently integrate these field measurements with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to build databases of artifacts and their contexts.

Large-scale excavations are time consuming and generally expensive to carry out, so other techniques have been developed for assessing a site's age and contents. These include coring, which involves drilling a narrow-diameter shaft to recover a sample of an ancient site's layers, and “shovel-testing” in which archaeologists scoop up representative samples from the upper layers of a site.

Systematic reconnaissance techniques enable excavated areas to be placed into the larger landscape context. Pedestrian survey is a method in which teams of people walk over terrain to identify artifacts and features that are still visible on the ground. Buried remains also can be found through a variety of remote sensing techniques, including magnetic gradiometry, electrical resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar. Other advanced approaches include the use of satellite data to detect buried remains. The use of older, declassified military images, such as CORONA, can be particularly valuable for parts of the world where population growth or warfare has resulted in logistical constraints on site access.

Data and Analysis

Archaeological data management includes the recording of many types of information, from artifact types to landscape conditions. Pottery and stone tools are classified and organized in ways that will help them be compared with similar materials from neighboring sites to understand patterns of human activity over time. Ancient remains are dated by a variety of techniques. Radiocarbon dating is suitable for organic materials that are less than 50,000 years old, while dendrochronology is utilized to assess the age of wooden beams through the study of the patterns of tree rings. There are also techniques that measure changes in object energy over time, such as thermoluminescence for baked-clay objects and optically stimulated luminescence for sediments.

Studies of ancient food remains provide information about changes in human relationships to the [Page 30]environment, including the adoption of agriculture starting 10,000–12,000 years ago. Plant remains, such as seeds, often are preserved by charring in ancient cooking fires. These and other small remains can be recovered through flotation, which is a technique for washing dirt to release small organic fragments that float to the surface of the water.

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