All soils are put through a quarter inch screen, and then a sixteenth inch screen to insure that all materials are recovered. Most materials are washed very carefully in fresh water and then air-dried. After drying, the artifacts are sorted. Shells are identified down to genus and species. Bones are sorted into categories of fish and mammals.
Pottery is sorted for future attempts at vessel reconstruction.
After all the sorting, shells are weighed, counted and logged, and will be returned to the ground area from which they were taken. Many samples are taken during the project. They will go to a variety of specialists, but all materials will come back to St. John. All the carbonized plant remains will first go to the project's paleobotanist. She will look at how humans have affected the island's plant environment over time, the diet of the Taino, and look for plants they may have used for medicinal purposes.