great hoaxes david terms

A.V. Kidder- From 1915 to 1929, Kidder conducted site excavations at an abandoned pueblo in Pecos, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He excavated levels of human occupation at the pueblo going back more than 2000 years, and gathered a detailed record of cultural artifacts, including a large collection of pottery fragments and human remains. From these items, he was able to establish a continuous record of pottery styles from 2000 years ago to the mid to late 1800s. Kidder then analyzed trends and changes in pottery styles in association with changes in the Pecos people's culture and established a basic chronology for the Southwest. With Samuel J. Guernsey, he established the validity of a chronological approach to cultural periods. Kidder asserted that deductions about the development of human culture could be obtained through a systematic examination of stratigraphy and chronology in archaeological sites. This research laid the foundation for modern archaeological field methods, shifting the emphasis from a "gentlemanly adventure" adding items such as whole pots and cliff dwellings to museum coffers to the study of potsherds and other artifacts in relation to the cultural history. Pioneering archaeologists in other regions of the United States completed the transformation of professional methodology initiated by Kidder.

...

Augustus Pitt-Rivers- Made the statement that every single detail of excavations is important so his excavations were very systematic and detailed. Because of this he was noted for his innovations in archaeological methods, and in the museum display of archaeological and ethnological collections. He is widely regarded as the first scientific archaeologist to work in Britain. His most important methodological innovation was his insistence that all artifacts, not just beautiful or unique ones, be collected and catalogued. This focus on everyday objects as the key to understanding the past changed archeology from simple treasure hunting to a scientific method.

...

Boucher de Perthes- His leisure time was chiefly devoted to the study of what was afterwards called the Stone Age and antediluvian man, as he expressed it. About the year 1830 he had found, in the gravels of the Somme valley, flints that in his opinion bore evidence of human handiwork. He proposed the theory that humans had made stone tools in association with extinct animals, and before the biblical epic, he was ridiculed for such theories.

...

Cardiff giant- was one of the most famous hoaxes in U.S. history. It was a 10-foot (3.0 m)-tall purported "petrified man" uncovered on October 16, 1869 by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. "Stub" Newell in Cardiff, New York. Both it and an unauthorized copy made by P.T. Barnum are still on display. It gained immediate popularity and was used as a means to gain income (people paid to see the giant). The giant was made of gypsum, which functions like plaster, also, O.C. Marsh uncovered that the giant had chisel markings exposing the hoax. George Hull confessed that in reality the giant was a fraud, and that it initially it had his own face on it. The entire thing originated from the fact that he had made a bet that Americans would believe in giants if they saw it

...

Charles Darwin- For his breakthroughs in evolutionary theory Darwin posed the concept of the mechanism of evolution, that animals have not always been the same as well as the model for how they change. Thus, he challenged the foundations of Christian beliefs and the concept that human history spanned only as far back as 4,004 BC (in accordance with biblical text).

...

Charles Lyell- Lyell was the "father of modern geology" and as well as the man that proposed Uniformitarianism, that the process of geology have always been the same since they began. This served as a counterargument to catastrophic theories such as that of Cuvier.

...

Christian Thomsen- In 1819 Tomsen came up with the three-age system of classification by putting things in order. The three ages consisted of the Stone Age (Paleolithic) in which most things found are made of stone, followed by the Bronze Age in which writing can be found, as well as the beginning of "history" and then the Iron Age in which an extensive amount of history takes place. This came about as a result of the large collections found in the museums of Denmark that Tomsen had access to as director of the National Museum of Denmark.

...

Davenport Tablets- hoax that came from a site in Iowa in the 1880s when Jacob Gass began excavation. Effigy pipes, mica snakes and copper beads belonging to the Hopewell culture were found, the tablets were thought to have a tri-lingual Iberian-Phoenician-Egyptian text which added more to the argument found in Barry Fell's "America BC" of a Pre-Colombian transatlantic exchange. The debate on the validity of the tablets continued until the 1970s when they were exposed as frauds, as a matter of fact Gass himself took part in forgery before.

...

Fujimura- Shinichi Fujimura became a well respected and internationally known archeologist due to his ability to find remarkably old sites in Japan; but the strange thing about Fujimura was that he had no degree in archeology or even training in the subject. Before Fujimura Japan's oldest sites dated to 35,000 years ago, but Fujimura was making finds that showed Japan had sites that dated deep into the Asian Stone Age around 600,000 years ago. The press and Japan ended up calling him "God's Hand" for his ability to find these sites. On October 22, 2000 he was caught by Mainichi Shimbum, one of Japan's national daily newspapers, burying old artifacts from the Asian mainland into a Japanese site. The Japanese ending up discovering that he falsified 42 sites that he worked on, and this in turn dealt a devastating blow to Japanese archeology setting them back decades.

...

Geoarchaeology- a multi disciplinary approach rather than a discipline and uses the techniques and subject matter of Geography, geology and other earth sciences to examine topics that inform archaeological knowledge and thought. Geoarchaeologists study the natural physical processes that affect archaeological sites such as geomorphology, the formation of sites through geological processes and the effects on buried sites and artifacts post-deposition.

...

Grave Creek stone- a hoax found in West Virginia and excavated in 1838 by Abelard Tomlinson who owned the site on which it was found. The stone was found with a script carved into it in 1845. Matthew Reed went on to analyze whether is was an alphabet and came to the conclusion that it was likely made by the workers of the site and that it was a fake. JP McClain argued that it was an article of ancient script not related to the Native Americans which leads to Barry Fell's 1976 interpretation that the mound builders came from the Mediterranean world and that the stone was Phoenician, even going as far as claiming that he had found a translation for it. However, by the end of the 20th century it was considered by most as a fake and the mound is believed to be one of the Adena Culture.

...

Ian Hodder- Hodder is a British archaeologist and pioneer of postprocessualist theory in archaeology that first took root among his students and in his own work between 1980-1990. His theory approaches archaeology on a more multi-disciplinary, encompassing basis.

...

James Ussher- Ussher created a 17th-century chronology of the history of the world formulated from a literal reading of the Bible. The chronology is sometimes associated with Young Earth Creationism, which holds that the universe was created only a few millennia ago. He cites 4,004 BC as the year in which the Earth was created which for centuries was accepted as the correct assumption.

...

Jens Worsaae- Worsaae succeeded Tomsen as director of the National Museum of Denmark and continued to work on his three-age system, he was the first to excavate and use stratigraphy to prove sequence to be correct, and he laid down the scientific foundations for archaeology

...

Lewis Binford- Lewis Binford is mainly known for his contributions to archaeological theory and his promotion of ethno-archaeological research. As a leading advocate of the "New Archaeology" movement of the 1960s, he proposed a number of ideas that matured into processualism. He and others argued that there should be emphasis on the application of scientific methodologies as well as the hypothetico-deductive method to archaeology. He places a strong emphasis on generalities and the way in which human beings interact with their ecological niche, defining culture as the extrasomatic means of adaptation. After the 1980s when post-processualism came about, Binford's strictly systems-based approach fell out of favor.

...

Neanderthal- One of the first finds of fossilized remains of the earliest inhabitants of Europe was in 1856 with the discovery of bones in a limestone quarry near the Neander Valley in Germany. At the time the ancient anatomical attributes of these bones were explained away as coming from a pathological modern individual. But now they are considered the beginning of paleoanthropology and were a pivotal point in disproving the strictly biblical sense of history at the time.

...

Nels Nelson- Nelson pioneered the technique of stratigraphic excavation in America. During his work in the Galisteo Basin, he dug a series of 1-foot levels in trash mounds at archeological sites, classified all the potshards he found into seven types, and calculated their frequencies by levels. These resembled sections of normal distribution curves, and demonstrated that statistical analysis of data from arbitrary levels could reveal chronological change just as could data from physically distinct strata. This technique, refined by Alfred V. Kidder at Pecos, continues to be used to the present day. Nelson also excavated a number of Pueblo ruins in the Galisteo Basin, many of which were abandoned following the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. He also did some excavation at Chaco Canyon with Earl Morris.

...

Occam- In archaeology the principle of "Occam's razor" is used as the most parsimonious and satisfying answer and or hypothesis is the most likely one, hence, the more fantastical and complex of hypothesis should not be accepted over the more logical and simple.

...

Piltdown- a famous paleontological hoax concerning the finding of the remains of a previously unknown early human. The hoax find consisted of fragments of a skull and jawbone collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, a village near Uckfield, East Sussex, England. The fragments were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early man. The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human.

...

Primary

...

Pseudo science arguments- Pseudo science has anachronistic thinking, looking for mysteries, appeal to myths. They create irrefutable hypotheses and take only the evidence that support their claims. Terms-

...

Robert Hooke- Hooke was a 17th century English natural philosopher, architect and polymath who played an important role in the scientific revolution, through both experimental and theoretical work. He is best known for having coined the term "cell" and as the father of "microscopy" which would play an instrumental role in making archaeology more scientific.

...

Schliemann- Heinrich Schliemann used Homer's Iliad to discover the site of Bronze Age Troy, thereby linking the study of prehistoric societies with the later classical civilizations know to history. He chose Hissarlik Turkey as the place for Troy, but he was all wrong his Troy II site was too old but his Troy VI site could have worked.

...

Squier and Davis- In 1848 Squier and Davis published the results of their research into the mounds of the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, providing one of the first classifications of burial mounds, temple platforms, and effigy mounds, inferring that these different types of mounds served different functions. However, in trying to identify the occupants of these sites, they lapsed into pure speculation, refusing to believe that Native Americans or their ancestors could be the builders.

...

Sub-Categories of Contexts

...

Thomas Jefferson- Jefferson contributed to those that maintained that the ancestors of the living Native Americans produced the prehistory of America. Jefferson himself excavated an earthen mound in Virginia and established that Native Americans had built it. Jefferson was also a pioneer in systematic excavation, accurate recording, and the use of Stratigraphy, by observing that the sequence of earthen layers (strata) reflected the passage of time.

...

Walter Taylor- Taylor saw archaeology as an integrated discipline, combining the study of diet, settlement patterns, tools and other elements to provide a holistic view of the past. This approach, along with his open and specific criticism of leading archaeologists of his day, caused dismay amongst many archaeologists at the time but is now a standard practice in the discipline. Taylor was one of the first to loudly decry the descriptive, historical approaches in the field at the time. His work was that which preceded the "new archaeology" movement.

...

comparative approach- Could not find definition

...

crystal skulls- Fraudulent archaeological hoax that is made to seem Pre-Colombian but is made with technology that obviously came about after the time during which the skulls were supposedly made. They were "Discovered" in the 1920s by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges in the jungles of Belize. Jane Walsh used experimental archaeology to discern that the skull was made by modern tech such as molds and analyzed the cutting pattern of the skulls that exhibited the presence of wheel marks to make the cuts lacking in the Pre-Columbian America, exposing the fraudulence behind them.

...

four fields of anthropology (ashmore ch.1)

...

paleomagnetic dating or archaeomagnetism- Method of dating archaeological materials that relies on the fact that the earth's magnetic field varies over time, shifting in the horizontal plane (expressed as declination angle) as well as vertically (expressed by the dip angle). When enough cross-dated archaeomagnetic samples have been analyzed, the variations in dip and declination can be matched to a time scale, this allowing newly discovered fire-clay samples to be dated directly, using the archaeomagnetic data alone.

...

zooarchaeology- the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. The remains consist primarily of the hard parts of the body such as bones, teeth, and shells. Such remains may represent the food refuse of ancient populations as well as animals used for transportation, farm labor, clothing, decoration, or pets.

...

uni-linear evolution (ch. 2)

A 19th cen. Version of cultural evolution holding that all human societies change according to a single fixed evolutionary course, passing through the same stages, described as savagery, barbarism, and civilization by Lewis Henry Morgan.

Culture

A definition suited to archaeology sees culture as the cumulative resource of human society that provides the means for nongenetic adaptation to the environment by regulating behavior in 3 areas: technology, social systems, and ideology....Anything that involves humans is culture. Culture is the way humans adapted to their environment (prof def.)

Magnetometer

A device used in subsurface survey that measures minor variations in the earth's magnetic field, which may reveal archeological features as magnetic anomalies.

hypothesis testing (ch.1)

A hypothesis is a statement of relationships based on a set of assumptions. Then you test that hypothesis through research.

Stratigraphy

A relative dating technique. The archaeological evaluation of the significance of stratification to determine the temporal sequence of data within stratified deposits by using the law of superposition (older stuff have to be below younger stuff) and context evaluations.

Archeological Research Design (7 stages)

A systematic plan to coordinate archeological research to ensure the efficient use of resources and to guide the research according to the scientific method. There are seven stages to this process: formulation, implementation, data gathering, data processing, analysis, interpretation, and publication.

multi-linear evolution (ch.2)

A theory of cultural evolution that sees each society pursuing an individual evolutionary career shaped by accumulating specific cultural adaptations, rather than seeing all societies as pursuing the same course. → cultural systems do not follow a single pattern.

three age system (Stone, Bronze, Iron)

A traditional diachronic model describing the sequence of technological periods in the Old World, each period characterized by predominant use of stone, bronze, or iron tools. Christian Thomsen, early 19th cen. Danish scholar, is given credit for promulgating this system. His colleague, Jens Worsaae, conducted excavations that verified it.

Processualism (ch.3)

According to the book also known as the cultural process approach which refers both to how the component parts of a culture function as a system at one point in time and to how cultures change over time.

Antiquarianism (ashmore ch.2)

An antiquarian is a nonprofessional who studies the past for its artistic or cultural value, such as amateur collectors. They differ from an archaeologist and looter.

Transformation Processes

Archeological data is the result of one of two factors: behavioral or transformational processes. Transformational processes refer to the second stage after behavioral processes have occurred when the material remains have been deposited. They are the conditions and events that affect archeological data from the time of deposition to the time of recovery and the archeologist recognizes and acquires them as data. The changes can come as a result of natural processes or because of human activity.

archaeological context (ch.4)

Characteristics of archaeological data that result from combined behavioral and transformational processes, which are evaluated by means of recorded association, matrix, and provenience.

Site

Collection of artifacts, ecofacts, and features.

Excavation

Data gathering by removal of matrix to reveal the three-dimensional structure of the data and matrix, both vertically (penetrating excavation) and horizontally (clearing excavation). It is used to discover and to retrieve data from beneath the ground.

Garbage, Fresh Kills

Fresh Kills is a landfill in Staten Island, NY which is the largest active landfill in the world and the tallest geographical feature on the American eastern seaboard. The site is important to archeologists because the garbage in it can be studied and provide data on human activity. Studying this landfill allows for study of the recent past and present and provides information on societal activity. Those participating the in the University of Arizona's Garbage project at the Fresh Kill's site argue that its study will provide insights into the nature of our own society and the world in which we live.

Region

Geographical area that contains multiple sites.

Artifact

Has been made and modified by humans. It is portable too. (i.e. pots)

Feature

Human made and modified, but in a context that is completely non-portable (i.e burial, stone mound).

New Archaeology

I don't really know how to define this term. I guess new archaeology differs from historical archaeology. Archaeology is a science.

Sub-surface survey

It is used to detect and record archeological evidence beneath the surface by ground-based remote sensing methods. These include augeuring, coring, shovel testing, and use of a magnetometer, resistivity detector, and similar means.

material culture ( ch.3)

Materialist model of culture holds that there are biological and psychological needs common to all humans, such as hunger, sex, shelter. How these shared needs are met in different societies provides a means for evaluating each society's adaptive efficiency by measuring input, output, costs, and benefits. Human needs are satisfied most directly by a culture's infrastructure, composed of technology, economy, and demography. The infrastructure is the main focus of change.

Ecofact

Not man made, includes organic and inorganic objects (i.e. an animal bone). Non-cultural, natural remain but it has cultural significance.

penetrating vs clearing excavation

Penetrating excavations reveal the vertical dimensions of archeological deposits to define the depth, sequence, and composition of buried data. Penetrating excavations are primarily deep probes of subsurface deposits. Their main thrust is vertical, and their principal objective is to reveal in cross section, the depth, sequencing, and composition of archeological remains. They cut through sequential or adjacent deposits. This category includes test pits, trenches, and tunnels. This is different from clearing excavation which reveal the horizontal dimensions of archeological sites to define the extent, distribution, and patterning of archeological data. The main thrust is outward or across, and their principal objective is to reveal the horizontal extent of an archeological deposit and the arrangement of objects within the deposit. Clearing excavations emphasize tracing continuities of single surfaces or deposits of varying extent.

Primary Context v. Secondary Context

Primary context refers to conditions in which both provenience and matrix have remained undisturbed since the original deposition. Secondary context refers to alterations of provenience, association, and matrix by transformational forces caused by either human or natural activity. The basic difference between them then is that one context is in its original form as left by their creators while the latter has been changed through some means.

Resitivity

Refers to the principle that different objects will have different resistivity levels to electric currents. An a resistivity detector is an instrument used in subsurface survey that measures differences in the conductivity of electrically current and thus may identify archeological features. Mooisture content gives most soils a low resistance to an electrical current; solid features, such as walls or floors can raise resistance considerably.

absolute vs relative dating

Relative dating refeers simply to evaluating the age of one item relative to other items—for example, determining that artifact A is older than artifact B. In relative dating, actual ages are not assigned to data. In the otherhand, absolute dating refers to placing the age of a sample on an absolute time scale, usually a calendrical system. Although absolute methods assign an age in years, they are seldom precise and often assign a range of years.

post-processualism

Said that instead of focusing on comparing cultures, should know the culture inside and out. Focus on people. You need to understand particular contexts. Need to understand the past from people who lived in the past.

Uniformitarianism

The consistency of earth shaping processes and their resultant stratigraphy. The processes that went on in the past are the same ones that are going on today.

culture history (ch.3)

The cultural history approach dominated archaeology during the first half of the 20th cen. It is an archaeological interpretation based on temporal and spatial syntheses of data and the application of general descriptive models usually derived from a normative view of culture.

Acquisition

The first stage in which raw materials are produced

Deposition

The last stage in which artifacts are discarded.

scientific method (ch.1)

The operational means of science, by which natural phenomena are observed and conclusions drawn.

half-life

The period required for one-half of a radioactive isotope to decay and form a stable element; this decay rate, expressed as a statistical constant for each isotope with a specified range of error, provides the measurement scale for radiometric dating.

archaeological record (ch.1)

The physical remains produced by past human activities, which are sought, recovered, studied, and interpreted by archaeologists to reconstruct the past.

Manufacture

The second stage in which raw materials are modified to produce artifacts.

Linguistic

The study of human languages throughout the world, individually and comparatively (a synchronic aspect) and developmental (how languages change and evolve through time, a diachronic aspect).

Archaeological

The study of the human past through material remains, with the aim of ordering and describing the events of the past and explaining their meaning (book def). A set of scientific and systematic methods to study the past using material remains of past human behavior. Studying cultures and human beings in all diversity. (prof. def).

Biological

The study of the human species as a biological organism, including our evolution (a diachronic aspect) and our contemporary biological characteristics and variations (a synchronic aspect).

Cultural

The study of the human species as a cultural organism, including 2 synchronic approaches to the study of living societies: ethnography and ethnology.

Use

The third stage in which artifacts are utilized.

Provenience

The three-dimensional location of archeological data within or on the matrix at the time of discovery. The provenience allows the archaeologist to record and later reconstruct association and context. Horizontal provenience is usually recorded relative to a geographical grid system using known reference points. Vertical provenience is usually recorded as elevation above or below sea level.

acquisition, manufacture, use, deposition

These four stages are the four stages of behavioral processes. They are the human activities that produce tangible archeological remains. Artifacts such as tools are acquired from raw materials, used for one or more specific purposes, and then discarded when broken or worn.

culture as a system

We can look at culture as a series of subsystems (i.e. ideology, religion, beliefs) and a change in one can change other parts of the system. (part of the cultural history approach)

potassium argon dating

a radiometric dating technique based on the half-life of the radioactive isotope of potassium 40K that decays to form argon 40Ar. The half-life of 40K is 1.31 billion years but the method can be used ot date materials as recent as 100,000 years old. The technique is used principally to determine ages for geological formations that contain potassium.

frequency seriation

a relative dating techinique in which artifacts or other archeological data are chronologically ordered by ranking their relative frequencies to conform with battleship-shaped curves. This is based on the assumption that each artifact type follows a predictable career from the time of its origin to an expanding popularity and finally to total disuse.

Isotope

any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass or mass number and different physical properties. Isotopes of certain elements such as carbon are used by radiometric dating techniques to determine the age of artifacts.

surface survey or regional survey

archeological survey technique using direct observation to discover and gather archeological data present of the ground surface; includes mapping and surface collection. It is used to detect and record archeological evidence present on the ground by direct inspection of the terrain.

Lithics

artifacts made from stone, including the chipped-stone and ground-stone industries. Lithic techonology has its roots in the first attempts to modify and shape stone to make tools. (stone age→bronze age→ iron age)

Primary Use-related

artifacts recovered from a place where they were acquired, made or used are in a use-related primary context. (ex. Pompeii)

Primary transposed

artifacts that have been deposited by human activity outside of the places where they were acquired, made or used are transposed in primary context. (ex. Midden)

culture change, culture process- The culture process is one of the three stages of the evolution of archeology

culture history, culture process or processual and post processual. This view started up in the 1960's where Louis Binford said archeologists should look at how and why people and cultures changed and not just at pots and dates. The culture process is based on two complementary models of culture: ecological and materialist. Ecological states that environmental change is the number one changer of culture. The materialist model states that all people have common needs such as hunger, sex and shelter and these needs are satisfied by the cultures infrastructure and the infrastructure is the main focus of change. The infrastructure changes so it can respond to the human needs and environmental conditions by optimizing benefits relative to costs for each society.

Data Gathering

data is gathered normally by surface survey and excavation.

Analysis

in this stage data are isolated, described, and structured, usually via typological classification, and chronological, functional, technological, and constituent determinations are made. It is a systematic analysis of the findings including dating and finding out the composition of an object for example to find out where it was made.

Formulation

involves defining the research problem, performing background investigations, and conducting feasibility studies. It answers what is to be looked at in a specific question and also where to and how to do so.

Implementation

involves obtaining permits, raising funds, and making logistical arrangements so be able to perform the research set out in the formulation.

Interpretation

involves the synthesis of results of data analysis and the explanation of their meaning in order to reconstruct the past. If the evidence supports the answer to the question asked during formulation then the idea is plausible (a certain degree of uncertainty remains). If it is not supported by evidence, it is wrong.

radiocarbon dating

it is a form of a radiometric dating which is absolute dating technique based on the transformation of unstable radioactive isotopes into stable elements. Radiocarbon dating measures the decay of the radioactive isotope of carbon 14C into stable nitrogen 14N. A precondition for radiocarbon dating is that the material to be tested is organic. The half-life of 14C is 5730 years but it can be used to date samples up to 100,000 years old.

Remote sensing

it is a method for discovering sites in which the observer is not in direct contact with the archeological remains. It involves aerial or subsurface detection of archeological data. An example of this would be to use a helicopter to obtain aerial views of a large area which can make features and sites more easy to find.

Seriation

it is a relative dating method derived from cultural regularities. It refers to a variety of techniques that seek to order artifacts in a series so that adjacent members in the series are more similar than members farther apart in the series (relative dating method). Seriation has two basic applications: stylistic and frequency seriation.

Chronology

it is the science that deals with measuring time by regular divisions and that assigns to events their proper dates.

Dendrochronology

otherwise known as tree-ring dating, is the best-known method of directly determining absolute age for wood. This approach is based on counting the annual growth rings in the cross-sections of cut trees. The tree-ring growth patterns are then linked to develop a continuous chronological sequence.

Publication

providing results of the data and interpretations resulting from the archeological research. This communicates to other archeologists the findings.

Secondary Natural

refers to a context that has been transformed because of disturbance by nonhuman agents such as animal activity, tree roots, erosion, decay, volcanism, and earthquakes.

matrix

refers to the physical medium that surrounds, holds, and supports archeological data. The matrix provides important clues to understanding the artifacts, features, or ecofacts it contains. Most frequently, it consists of combinations of soil, sand, gravel, or rock.

Secondary cultural

site has been transformed or disturbed through human activity either by accident (person digging a well in a backyard and disturbing a grave) or design (looting)

Ceramics

term that covers all industries in which artifacts are modeled or molded from clay and then made durable by firing. In addition to pottery, this category includes ceramic figurines, musical instruments, and spindle whorls.

Data processing

the preparation of data for later analysis. This includes the cleaning, conserving, labeling, inventorying, and cataloging of all artifacts found.

Rosetta stone- The Rosetta Stone is an Ancient Egyptian artifact that was crucial in helping understand Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The stone is made up of three translations of a single passage

two in Egyptian language scripts (hieroglyphic and Demotic) and one in classical Greek. It was created in 196 BC, discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta and contributed greatly to the deciphering of the principles of hieroglyph writing in 1822 by the British scientist Thomas Young and the French scholar Jean-François Champollion.