An archaeologist studies artifacts to learn about past people much like the way a police detective might study the evidence at a crime scene. Each piece of evidence from the past, each artifact, can help tell the story of who was there and what happened. Unlike police work, however, archaeologists may be studying artifacts that are only fifty years old to perhaps many thousands of years old. Over time, a natural build-up of soil covers the artifacts that people leave behind, so archaeologists must carefully dig, or excavate , the remains from the ground. Any place where human activity occurred and where artifacts are found is called an archaeological site .
Archaeologists excavate two types of archaeological sites.
Prehistoric sites were created before a culture had a written record, a time period called prehistory . Prehistoric people did not have a written language to use for keeping records about their lives. So, often prehistory is a great mystery, because all we know about prehistoric people is what we learn from the artifacts they left behind. Four different groups of prehistoric people have lived in Alabama over time. We call them Paleoindians, Archaic Indians, Woodland Indians, and Mississippian Indians.