What types of evidence do archaeologists use? Abraham (12)

Archaeologists aren’t fussy, they use any evidence that they can get their hands on. 

Even before you start to dig there is the evidence from earthworks, the humps and bumps that show where people dug ditches and built mounds, the evidence from aerial photographs that show sites in crops and ploughed fields and then of course all the wonderful information that comes from geophysical survey (not ‘geofizz’ to me!) which sees through the soil to the archaeology buried below. 

And then when we do dig there’s the evidence from the finds, the flints and pottery and metal and bone which can provide evidence of date and of how people traded, what they ate and cooked in and also sometimes what they believed in. 

But what has changed so much in the time that I have been an archaeologist is how much evidence comes from science, from analysing finds to see what they are made of and where they have come from. Tiny bits of bones can be radiocarbon dated and isotopes in them can tell if a person or an animal was local or came from a long distance away. We can sometimes tell if flints were used for slicing vegetables and what sort of food was cooked in certain sorts of pots – amazing how much we can now tell about the way our ancestors lived. 

And don’t forget environmental evidence, from snails, pollen, seeds and insects buried in ancient soils that can paint a picture of what the landscape was like hundreds or thousands of years ago. 

We are so lucky that there are so many types of evidence that we can use and they’re getting more and more exciting as time goes on.