Since 1997, Olson has supervised the archaeology laboratory at Poplar Forest. While other Poplar Forest archaeologists spend most of their time outside excavating to retrieve artifacts and soil evidence, Olson and laboratory assistants Bree Detamore and Liz Paull spend most of their time inside trying to make sense of it all.
Every artifact is cleaned, labeled in the laboratory, and cataloged in the lab s computer system.
While Olson still has to hit the books to help determine date and origin information on many artifacts, modern technology has given Poplar Forest archaeologists a powerful new tool. Today s software programs manipulate the data quickly, making what would have been a time-consuming task decades ago if done at all as easy as clicking a computer mouse. The computer program does all the grunt work of retrieving information and finding trends. Imagine going through that amount by hand and trying to find patterns, notes Olson , adding that in the artifact database alone there are nearly 74,000 records. Indeed, she says, a century ago when archaeology was a young science, collecting and processing artifact information was done sporadically.