Q&A: Archaeology 101

An aerial view of an archaeological excavation of a dwelling on the Mongolian steppe

One of the key ways that we can learn about past human societies is by studying the remains they leave behind. In archaeology, something as simple as a bone fragment or a piece of broken pottery can reveal hidden information about how our ancestors lived their lives. We sat down with UTSC Anthropology’s resident archaeologists Lisa Janz and Genevieve Dewar to find out more about the discipline, and look at the study opportunities available for students at the University.

Can you describe how an archaeologist really works, for those who might only be familiar with the discipline from movies? 

LJ: Archaeology means different things to different people. For some of us it is about answering questions about the past so that we can understand humanity better, including how we might live in the future. Sometimes it is about rescuing important archaeological sites from destruction through development, or for the sake of sheer discovery of the unknown. For some people it is about gaining lost knowledge of their ancestors in order to improve their sense of self and identity. The movies portray archaeology as being about beautiful (or powerful) artifacts. Some artifacts can be both powerful and beautiful, but their magic lies in their ability to provide knowledge about the past. And when removed from the social context their power is lost.

GD: What I enjoy the most about archaeology is that we are working on completely different tasks every day. Within a single project we will conduct background research, consult with stakeholders, conduct land or aerial surveys, analyze material at a museum, excavate a new site, analyze new artefactual material in the field or in a lab, write up the results, collaborate with local people and experts, publish in scientific journals, and present the results at conferences. This makes for a lot of opportunities for people with a range of backgrounds, abilities, and interests.

Can you tell me a little about your current work?

GD: I work on the origins of modern humans in southern Africa from two important but different regions. In Namaqualand I study the evolution of desert foraging to learn how our ancestors adapted to global warming and developed significant social and technological innovations, such as ostrich eggshell flasks for carrying water and trading beads as an early form of social networking. I also work in the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of Lesotho, where I study high altitude adaptations by analyzing artefacts including animal bones and teeth, charcoal, ostrich eggshell flasks, and beads. 

LJ: Most of my research has been in Mongolia, where I have worked with many different contexts and time periods – from excavating 40,000 year old habitation sites to 3,500 year old horse heads ritually buried around massive stone monuments built by nomadic pastoralists, or to rescuing Bronze Age to Mongol-period cemeteries from mining developments. Since 2013, our collaborative Mongolian-Canadian expedition, the Gobi-Steppe Neolithic Project, examines how humans were adapting to climate warming 8,000 years ago and how the resulting social changes relate to the adoption of herding four thousand years later.    

What initially got you interested in archaeology? How did you begin to pursue your studies? 

GD: I am one of those people who found Anthropology/Archaeology as a second year University student. I was originally in the Space Science program where I had room for one elective course and Anthropology fit my schedule. After that first introduction I was hooked and transferred that summer into the Archaeology program at UTSG. At the time my life’s goal was to answer universal mysteries using physics and astronomy, but that had shifted to wanting to know about the origin of modern humans, to learn from our past to provide a better future here on Earth. 

LJ: Back in the days before the internet, my mother sold the World Book Encyclopedia and every year we would get a copy of the “Science Year in Review”. I would immediately flip to “Archaeology” to see what was discovered that year. I dreamed of making my own discoveries about things people had only imagined. For me, having grown up living off the land in a rural environment and close to nature, archaeology is the opportunity to discover something new about how humans live in and relate to the natural world.   

Can you talk about some of the archaeological digs you’ve participated in? 

GD: In February of 2003 I started my PhD in South Africa at the University of Cape Town, working on west coast shell middens at the Namaqualand DeBeers diamond mine dating from the last 8,000 years. While we did find burials, I was far more interested in the animal remains that could tell us about how people lived on the landscape in the past. Over four years we recorded over 1,500 sites and excavated 20 shell middens ahead of open cast mining and my PhD thesis was on 9 shell middens with good organic preservation. I have since worked on a variety of excavations primarily in South Africa and Ontario, including looking for human remains for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

LJ: My first dig was in 2002 on the Baikal Archaeology Field School, run through the University of Alberta.  We were excavating an ancient hunter-gatherer cemetery and finding all kinds of incredible things – a bronze medallion wrapped in birch bark, jade rings and axes, a hammered silver ring, and even the leg bone of a young child that had been engraved and painted in red. It was amazing, but also a bit unsettling, to think about who these people were, and why we were digging them up. At the same time, studying human remains – looking at individual people – allowed us to learn so much more about how people lived, how they cared for one another, and their relationships with other people across the region. Despite the allure of mortuary archaeology, my primary interest has always been habitation sites – looking at the products of everyday life, comparing it to the local environment, and trying to figure out what people were doing there – just as part of their daily lives. What were they eating?  How were they hunting?  How did the men, women, and children relate to one another? And then how did this change over hundreds of thousands of years – and why? 

Have you ever had any “eureka” moments where a particular clue illuminates your understanding of the story of a site? 

GD: The most memorable moments are usually tied to getting radiocarbon/optically stimulated luminescent dates back from the lab. For example, at one site in the Namaqualand Desert of South Africa, the stone tools from the surface layers were all nonformal and made of poor quality quartz, making it difficult to determine how old the deposit was based on artefact signatures from other sites. When the radiocarbon dates from the surface came in at 19,000 years, it all made sense, we had found a deposit from the Last Glacial Maximum, a period for which we had no comparative data and so we had no idea what it should look like. Today, the base of the excavation has been dated to 50,000 years ago, so we now have a long sequence of human occupation from a desert context, that shows how precipitation patterns changed as temperatures dropped, allowing for grass to grow to support zebra in what is now the southern extension of the Namib Desert.   

Another exciting moment was when we realized that the ostrich eggshell beads at our Lesotho highland sites (more than 30,000 years old) were travelling over 500 km. We used strontium isotopes to identify an isoscape for South Africa and identified a social network between the mountainous people in Lesotho and groups within the interior of southern Africa.  

LJ: As part of my dissertation research, I was studying the huge museum collections from the Gobi Desert that were stored in museums in Stockholm and New York. Since they were mostly all found on the surface rather than being excavated it was really hard to say how old they might be – they could have dated anywhere from 20,000 to 2,000 years ago! Normally, we use bone or charcoal to date archaeological sites, but none of that kind of stuff survived. I started talking to some of the materials scientists on campus and found out that you can radiocarbon date both eggshells and some types of pottery, stumbling across what were then pretty cutting-edge approaches to dating archaeological sites. As a result, I was able to create the first date-based chronology of land-use and technology for the Gobi Desert, and also ended up discovering that East Asian ostriches (just like the African ones, only much bigger), which were thought to have gone extinct about 20,000 years ago, actually survived as late as 8,000 years ago.   

Courses in Archaeology at UTSC
ANTB80H3S: Introduction to Archaeology (Jan 2022) – Students will learn the basics of archaeological methods and get to know a bit more about the discipline, including through a series of short practical assignments. 
ANTD35H3: Bioarchaeology (Jan 2022) – An advanced course that intersects innovative zooarchaeological and human osteology methodologies to provide robust interpretations of animal and human remains within archaeological contexts.
Two new courses are going to be offered to undergraduates in 2022/2023. 
-   C-level: Climate, Palaeoecology, and Policy: Archaeology of Humans in the Environment – Looks at the theories and methods used to understand how humans have lived in, interacted with, and even shaped the environment in the past.
-   D-level:, Caveman, Farmer, Herder, Trader: Evolution of Diet in Society – Examines diet from a deep-time perspective. The course shows how and provides a social context for how diet has changed through time - from Neanderthals, to big game hunters, to farmers, to industrialization and capitalism.
Beginning in 2023, the department will begin offering a small suite of more advanced courses in archaeological methods, and at least one more survey course on prehistory.  

Fieldwork Opportunities
Both Drs. Dewar and Janz run international field projects and offer undergraduate students the opportunity to join these projects as members of the field crews. Dr. Dewar is currently working on two field excavation programs in southern Africa, and Dr. Janz is currently working on a project that is investigating aurochs (wild cattle) hunting and management in the steppes of far eastern Mongolia. Closer to home, they are also working towards developing a local Ontario field project that will give students the chance to learn the basics of archaeological fieldwork, cultural heritage, and engagement with community partners.