Drawing on all of this information, the archeologist endeavors to reveal the intangible aspects of past human cultures that may not have been recorded in written history. Objects with known manufacturing dates can lend insight into when a site was occupied. Bones, seeds, and bottles can help reveal what people ate. Other artifacts can give information about what people were purchasing and what they were making. These objects may also be associated with oral history accounts of everyday life.
Prehistoric archeology is concerned with the period in human history before written records.
To piece together the past, prehistoric archeology relies on carefully developed cultural chronologies - the study of change in artifacts over time. Archeologically recovered plant and animal remains provide valuable knowledge about the foods consumed by prehistoric peoples. The arrangement of houses within sites and of sites over the landscape can tell us something about the way prehistoric peoples used the land and organized themselves, socially and politically. Though they have no written records to assist them, prehistoric archeologists sometimes use information from the descriptive studies of non-Western peoples to interpret events in prehistory. The RAP archeologists are responsible for the care and preservation of our archeological heritage.