It should be clear that the first step in extracting a story about the past from artifacts is to think about what it is that you want to know from the artifacts - the research question. Examples of questions and approaches to extracting information from different types of artifacts can be found in the sections in this encyclopaedia dealing with different kinds of material remains. (see Bone Tool Analysis; Fiber Artifacts; Lithics: Analysis, Use Wear; Pottery Analysis: Stylistic; Vitreous Materials Analysis). The main general point to be made is that questions are not really worth answering unless they are set in some kind of theoretical context. Different kinds of theoretical approaches account for differences between the questions asked by archaeologists and the way in which they go about answering them. Remember that, whatever your approach, there has to be a reason for asking the question.
It is also important to remember that, although popular archaeology books often concentrate on spectacular and rare artifacts, it is often mundane and common objects such as stone tools and pottery that enable a more complete story to be told. One example is the suggestion that the apparently mundane change from haphazard to ordered rows in toothbrush bristle placement in the late eighteenth century reflects an increasing importance of discipline and order in Western society at that time.
Using artifacts to answer a question almost involves all three steps of data gathering, analysis, and interpretation. Obviously, these are linked in that the data gathered and the analyses conducted have to be able to answer the question. Imagine you have an assemblage of pottery from a site and want to know about trade networks. You might divide the assemblage into pottery made locally and that made in other places. You need to select a series of attributes to distinguish different types in the pottery (see Classification and Typology). The source of pottery may be identifiable by style or raw material (see Pottery Analysis: Petrology and Thin-Section Analysis). The result would be a set of types based on one or both of these selected attributes. The proportions of each type present at the site could then be compared to answer the question. If only locally made pottery is present at your site, the people living there in the past did not trade (or at least not in pottery). The same assemblage could be used to answer a question about status. This time the assemblage would need to be sorted by attributes indicative of status. These might include the quality of clay (whether coarse or bone china), the maker, or possibly the design. Decisions about which attribute best indicates status will, of course, depend on the historical context of the site and your theoretical outlook but the principle is the same. Take note, however, that for most of our past it is very difficult to draw a direct analogy between what we might consider to be a style or object of high status.
The analysis approach described above is a very simplified version of what actually happens. In practice, archaeologists use as much evidence as possible to answer their research question. A study of status will not rely on one kind of artifact but several analyses of the various artifacts represented at the site as well as analyses of other kinds of archaeological evidence represented at the site. For example, the timing of the settlement of the central Pacific has been suggested by analyzing the distribution of dates associated with finds of a finely decorated type of pottery known as Lapita.
World History
