How to Inventory Archaeological Artifacts from

The Hamill Site (11 S 62) or the Falling Springs Site (11 S 295)

1) Pick a set of bags from the “To be inventoried—ready” box. These should be set up so that all the bags from a single provenance are together. All bags from a provenance should always be inventoried together.

2) Get an Inventory sheet from the Blank Forms book

3) Make sure there is a balance and a good supply of clean plastic bags, labels and sharpies nearby.

4) Carefully dump all the artifacts from all the bags onto a tray. If there are a lot of artifacts, put them on two trays. Make sure the bags stay on or attached to the trays, so the provenance isn’t lost.

5) Look at the artifacts and start dividing them up into piles. All pottery that isn’t a rim should go in one pile, all rimsherds in another. All chert debitage should go in a pile, as should all chipped tools, with a separate pile for groundstone tools. Charcoal gets its own pile, so does daub, Fire-cracked rock (FCR), bone, burnt bone, limestone, burnt limestone, unidentified rock, and minerals such as ochre, limonite and galena. Use the categories on the sheet as a guide.

6) Look over all your artifacts again. Are you sure there are no tools in with your debitage? Are there any small rims in with your bodysherds? Etc.

7) When you’re ready, have Dr. Reber look over your piles and check them.

8) When she OKs them, count the number of objects in a pile, and write it on the inventory sheet. Weigh all the objects in grams and write it on the sheet, too.

9) Label a plastic bag using a sharpie in the following format, about 2 inches below the seal on the bag:

Bag # (such as 4-3, or 06-1-1)

Site # (11 S 62 or 11 S 295)

Site Name (Hamill or Falling Springs)

Feature #, half, zone letter (such as F. 467 W1/2 zone A)

Or

Unit #, zone (PZ, or number)

# of artifacts, category of artifacts, wt of artifacts in grams.

Make sure you leave a space of about 2 inches at the top of the bag before you start writing—friction rubs sharpie off a plastic bag, and we want a handling space on the bag.

10) Get a label and write on it, in sharpie: Site #, Bag #, # of artifacts, category of artifacts, wt. of artifacts in grams.

11) Put the label in the marked bag with all the artifacts. Carefully close up the bag, and put it to one side.

12) Repeat the process with all the other piles of artifacts. Delicate artifacts, such as charcoal, ochre and fish scales, can stay in their film canisters, but the film canisters should be placed in marked bags with labels, as described above.

13) When every pile of artifacts has been counted, weighed, and put in a marked, labeled plastic bag, make a large bag for the whole collection of artifacts. Take a bag large enough to fit all the smaller plastic bags, and label it in the following way:

Bag #

Site #

Site Name

Feature #, zone letter, half

Date inventoried

Your initials

Be sure to leave 2 inches of space between the top of the bag and the label. Place all the smaller bags in the large bag. If the small bags are too numerous to put in one bag, make as many large bags as necessary to fit all the small bags. Keep the labeling the same, but below the regular label, write Bag 1 of X, Bag 2 of X, etc. This way we know how many bags there are, and whether we can find them.

14) Mark off the bag as inventoried in the master lab forms on the relevant Site Book. Put the bag and the sheet together in the space provided on the counter. Congratulations!! You’ve inventoried all the artifacts from one provenance!