Less expensive ceramics and well-worn utensils are additional indications that the site was occupied by poorer people. Of course, not everyone spends money in the same ways. Someone with very little money and a love for exotic spices might scrimp and save to buy spices to satisfy that craving. It is possible that a poorer person had been given spices as a gift. For this reason, it is important that archaeologists never depend on only one type of artifact to indicate the status of individuals.
Artifacts also help to identify activities.
The artifact assemblage resulting from household activities looks very different from an assemblage excavated from a blacksmith s shop. Artifacts from a household site usually include primarily wine bottle glass, nails, ceramic shards, animal bones, oyster shells, and tobacco pipe fragments. There would also be fewer artifacts relating to cooking or eating, since a blacksmith's shop is a workplace, not a site where people lived. Although few people kept records of exactly what they ate each day, they did leave evidence of nearly all of those meals. One way archaeologists study diet is through the examination of food bones recovered from sites.