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What’s Left? Material Evidence and Their Preservation

Explore the basic categories of archaeological finds, preservation processes, and iconic discoveries throughout history across various regions and sites. Learn how material evidence offers insights into cultural and natural formation processes.

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What’s Left? Material Evidence and Their Preservation

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  1. What’s Left? Material Evidence and Their Preservation

  2. 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, 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

  3. Tell Halula, Syria

  4. Sedgebury Camp, Iron Age site, England

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

  6. 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)

  7. 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

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

  9. gold coins from ship wreck, 1865

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

  11. Iron Age burial

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

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

  14. Plough marks, Etruria, Italy

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

  16. Man found in desert sand of Egypt, 3000 BCE

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

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

  19. Buddha statues of Bamiyan (Afghanistan) destroyed by TalibanMarch 1, 2001

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

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