Lab Work - The Real Archaeological Experience

Hello friends of the fort,  

Lab work is an often-overlooked portion of the archaeological process. The lab is where one often determines what an object is, where it's from, and other significant details. This post will be a brief overview of the lab practices and steps to making an object presentable to the public.  

An example of bag and artifact tags for items found in the same
context. Photo by Keirra Smith.

In the field, when an artifact is found, it is placed in an artifact bag with tags that identifies where it was found and at what depth (its' context). The bag tags include an accession number that allows archaeologists to associate the items bagged with their spacial location information.

Next in the field lab, artifacts are washed and sorted, allowing archaeologists better determine what the objects are and how they relate to the site. They are then bagged and given a secondary tag that stays in the smaller artifact bag. The field lab is also where items are looked at more closely to determine whether an object that was collected is actually an artifact and if it is culturally relevant. Examples of irrelevant objects would be mudstone and small pebbles without any obvious human interactions.  

Jacob Enos in the field house lab trying to determine
what an object collected from the field excavations is. Photo by Alex Renfro.

After the field season ends, all objects are brought to the lab for a more detailed analysis. This involves reclassifying and resorting with more specific labels as well as creating a detailed inventory (including count and weight of artifacts) so that each item collected is recorded in our digitized system. This system works like a library where a student doing research can look up artifacts in the collection, find their physical location from inventory, and then examine the artifacts for their research. When the researcher is finished, the artifacts are placed back into their storage boxes so that the next person can easily find locate them. For this to work properly, the artifacts need to be analyzed, inventoried, and placed into the appropriate storage boxes. At the Niles History Center, the collection is organized by artifact function and type (what it is generally such as a ceramic sherd and what the specific type is such as faience). Not only do students need to familiarize themselves with the artifacts found at Fort St. Joseph, they also need to know how to store and locate the artifacts properly. 

Just like field work, the lab work takes time. Every step of the process must be done for each bag of artifacts which is why I wanted to highlight the work that is required after the field before anyone can examine artifacts what we have found. 

-Alex Renfro