Objects that have been made or used by past people are called artifacts. A simple way to understand this concept is to look at a word you do not know the meaning of. If you look at just that word you would probably have no way to determine its meaning other than looking it up in the dictionary. However, if the word is part of a sentence or paragraph you can look at the words and sentences around the unknown word to help you understand its meaning. You might not know what the rest of the sentence means without that word.
Archaeologists do the same thing.
One artifact alone gives an archaeologist only limited information, but if additional information about where the artifact was recovered can be provided, then the archaeologist can begin to create a picture of how and when that artifact was used. MVAC Educational Programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities . This project was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation . Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.