Introduction

Ecofacts are traditionally defined as the non-artifactual organic and environmental remains found on archaeological sites, including remains produced as a result of human activity, affected by human activity, or that reveal aspects of human activity. However, while some ecofactual remains, such as agricultural soils, are clearly not artifacts in the traditional sense, they are definitely affected and changed by human activity. Other ecofacts, such as bone tools, provide important environmental information regardless of the extent of their modification into artifacts. Some archaeologists therefore include all environmental remains under the general heading of ecofacts, or do not distinguish between ecofacts and artifacts.

The study of ecofacts or environmental remains is most often included within the science of ‘environmental archaeology’. Environmental archaeology is the interdisciplinary study of past human interactions with the natural world and combines three fields: zooarchaeology (the study of archaeological nonhuman animal remains), archaeobotany (the study of archaeological plant remains), and geoarchaeology (the study of the archaeological abiotic landscape). Human remains are sometimes also included under the heading of ‘ecofacts’, but their study is more typically within the field of physical anthropology or bioarchaeology, and is dependent on the methods of human osteology analysis (see Osteological Methods).

Today, neither environmental archaeology nor the study of any ecofact is a simple investigation of ‘what was there’ or ‘what was used’. Among other questions, researchers studying ecofacts use both modern comparative and archaeological collections to reconstruct: (1) the environment associated with archaeological sites; (2) the use of plants, animals, and landscapes by past inhabitants of these sites; (3) the impact people had on the world around them; and (4) the way ancient peoples perceived and were affected by their surroundings and the plants and animals on which they relied.