The East Terrace Site - Goals of Archaeology

The East Terrace Site
Goals of Archaeology

What do archaeologists hope to accomplish by excavating the remains of old settlements like East Terrace? What possible questions can the small pieces of stone, pottery, and bone, and stains in the soil answer? By excavating, archaeologists hope to accomplish one or all of three goals: to reconstruct the history of past societies, to determine how people in these societies lived, and to understand why the societies changed through time. More recently a fourth goal, the preservation of cultural resources, has been added to the list.

To reconstruct the history of past societies, archaeologists assume that sites with similar types of artifacts were probably inhabited by people who were members of the same society - if not by the same people at different seasons of the year. By comparing artifacts from different sites, archaeologists study spatial and temporal relationships between groups of people.

The second goal of archaeology is to reconstruct the lifestyles of people who lived in the past. The goal is to determine what people ate, what kinds of clothing, tools, and structures they made, and how and when they moved across the landscape in pursuit of food. The discussion of past lifestyles at East Terrace in the following pages is an example of how archaeologists try to accomplish this goal.

We are all interested in how and why cultures change over time, for our own culture has changed dramatically, too. Archaeology is unique among the humanities and social sciences in that the objects it studies span great time periods. This has allowed archaeologists to study how and why cultures change in all periods and parts of the world.

The 'Preserving Minnesota's Cultural Resources' web site is jointly sponsored by the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) under Agreement No. 75077.