What do archaeological artefacts tell us?
Archaeological artefacts are the objects or parts of objects left behind by people
in the past. They can tell us about manufacturing techniques, trade and exchange,
eating habits, clothing, display, spiritual beliefs and much more. They can be dated
and help to date an archaeological site. However, unlike written documents, which
are relatively easy to read, artefacts need a lot of interpretation to make them
speak.
You can identify artefacts by working out the answers to a few simple questions:
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What colour is the artefact?
How heavy is the artefact?
What shape is the artefact?
What is the artefact made out of?
Is there any kind of decoration?
By comparing the answers to these questions against artefacts that have already
been identified, archaeologists can work out what the artefact was and maybe what
it was used for.
Compare your artefacts against the illustrated glossary below to work out what
your objects are. The scale in each picture is 10cm long.
Pottery
The lip of a pot is called the rim, the sides are called the walls and the bottom is
the base. Glaze is a shiny surface that is created by covering the surface of the
pot with a substance based on glass. The fabric of the pot is what you can see on
the broken edge.
This rim sherd is reddy brown, has a glaze on the inside and has a grey fabric
sandwiched between outer layers of red fabric. The glaze makes the inside surface
very smooth and slippery. This probably dates to the medieval or post-medieval
period, because of the glaze. Having the glaze just on the inside suggests that this
vessel was intended to carry liquid.
This sherd of pottery is from the body of a pot. It has a black surface and a black
fabric. It is not very attractive, is very rough to touch and may date to the Iron
Age or the Saxon period.
This base, seen from both the inside and the outside, is in a pottery style called
Samian ware. This is Roman in date. Samian ware is identified from the red burnish
on the surface. This is created by dipping the pot in clay mixed with water, which
created a hard surface when fired in a pottery kiln. It gives it a smooth surface,
unless it is eroded away like the one above. This Samian ware dish has a foot ring,
which is the circular bottom bit it stands on. The fabric is grey sandwiched by red.
Other fired clay objects
This is a chunk of brick from Penn. Bricks were sometimes made and used in the
medieval period but were not used with any regularity until the Tudor and later
periods. Bricks started out fairly thin, almost like tiles, and gradually got thicker
through the following centuries. This brick looks quite thick, so is probably of an
eighteenth or nineteenth century date.
This is a peg tile. You can see the holes where the pegs would have gone to attach
the tile to a roof. This tile is much thinner than the brick above, as it couldn't be
too heavy or the roof would collapse. Peg tiles were used as roof coverings from the
medieval period onwards. It is often quite difficult to date them.
This is a floor tile. It is heavier than the roof tile above and therefore would be too
heavy for roof. Tiles would usually only be used on the ground floor as they were so
heavy. This floor tile is also glazed. Roof tiles did not tend to be glazed, as few
people would see them, whereas everyone saw floor tiles so they had to look nice.
These clay pipe fragments can look quite like bone. However, the hollow stem is too
thin and too regular to be a bone, and the bowl (centre) often has signs of burning
inside and decoration on the outside. Clay pipes are usually made of a white clay,
and the stem is very smooth to the touch, whereas bones are rougher. Also, the
hole running through the stem is far too small to be a bone.
Opus signinum is a type of Roman floor material. It is often light pink in colour
(above right). It covers a whole floor in one large surface, rather than being a
series of tiles fitted together. Opus signinum was an alternative to a mosaic floor
and covered rooms that did not need mosaics, such as servant's quarters.
This blue and white ware is quite modern. These pieces date from the nineteenth
and twentieth century. You often find a lot of this in your gardens as people used to
throw their rubbish out into the back yard before there were proper rubbish
collections.
Animal bone
This bone is part of a long bone in an animal's leg. It is close to the joint, the bone
is starting to curve up to meet the joint in the picture on the left. The reason you
can tell it is an animal bone and not human is because the bone is very thick and only
has a small hole running through it, as you can see in the picture on the right. You
can see the bone is not white like the clay pipe, is quite rough and is not a regular
cylinder shape.
This small bone is probably from an animal's foot. It is a knucklebone but is much
too big to be a human hand or toe bone. Human hand and toe bones tend to be long
and slender and any short pieces are much smaller than this.
Once again you can see the walls of the bone are very thick, with only a thin hollow
running down the middle. The bone is rough and irregular in shape. You can see the
joint of this long bone. The straight cut in the centre of the bone suggests it was
butchered for meat.
Flint
Flint is a type of stone. Before people learned how to make metal, stone was used
for things like tools and weapons. These artefacts date to the Palaeolithic or Old
Stone Age, from between 500,000 to 10,000 years ago. Flint artefacts like this are
usually very distinctive and have a defined flaked cutting edge. These are known as
handaxes though it is likely that they were hafted to a handle as well as being used
in the hand. It is generally thought that these artefacts were used as weapons, for
chopping down trees and as cutting tools.
These flint tools date to the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, from about 4000 to
2200 BC. Even though they are both of similar date the flints on the left have a
surface patina that has turned them white, while the flint on the left is still black.
The patina was probably due to being buried in chalky soil on Whiteleaf Hill,
whereas the flint on the right was found in Haddenham, which is on clay. The flint
from Haddenham is called a knife and it is thought it was used for cutting meat and
vegetable fibres. It may have been useful as a skinning tool as well. The flints from
Whiteleaf include an arrowhead (central flint), a scraper for scraping skins (on the
right) and three smaller flints that may have been fitted into a composite artefact.
Coins
These gold coins date to the Late Iron Age. Coinage was virtually unknown in Britain
before around 100 BC. These coins were based on coins of Phillip of Macedon from
Greece that had made their way around Europe. As time went on coins grew less and
less like the Macedonian coins. It is thought that these coins weren't used as
currency in the same way we do. They may have been given as payment to Britons
who went to fight in Gaul against Julius Caesar. Coins like these are often found
together in hoards, as if people had collected them and then buried them for safekeeping.
Shell
Oyster shells are often found on archaeological sites. Unlike today when oysters
are expensive and are not eaten by many people, in prehistoric, Roman and medieval
times, oysters were a cheap and abundant food source. The two white oysters in
the picture come from a Roman villa in Foscott whereas the grey example is much
older and has become fossilised. They are still recognisable even if they have
turned grey as they have a layered texture on the outside (see above right), and
they have the distinctive shape. When alive an oyster has two shells held together
protecting it from predators.
Slag
Slag is the waste product of metal-working. Most metals are found as ores, there
are not many that occur as pure metals naturally. Ores are compounds of metal and
many different elements. When heated, the metal is melted from the rest of the
ore, which fuses together into slag. As a consequence, slag is very rough, has a very
irregular shape and can be all different colours.
Glass
These pieces of glass are a very deep green and have thick walls. They are not very
see through and are curved. This type of glass was produced in the post-medieval
period for bottles. Other types of glass may be more translucent, thin, flat and
stained with bright colours, which may be window glass. Roman glass was often
recycled, which caused the glass to go from white to a pale green. Care should be
taken when handling glass as the edges stay sharp.
Fossils
These fossilised oysters were found in Aylesbury. When dinosaurs roamed the
earth, Aylesbury Vale was underwater. It is common to find fossils of marine
animals in this area. Fossils look like they are made of stone but at one time were
living things. The way you can tell they are not merely stones is that they display a
pattern or shape of a living thing.