This chapter leads from an initial section on the major themes of time and change to the discovery of archaeological sites. Grand views of time (geological) and biological change (evolution) are presented here. We discuss the stages of excavation, selecting sites, the field director, field crew are elaborated in this section on digging, along with information on vertical and horizontal excavations. Analysis of archaeological materials including artifacts, ecofacts, and features is explained in brief. The relationship between sites and settlement patterns is discussed to provide some sense of regional archaeology. A final section on interpretation in archaeology provides a condensed and hopefully unbiased discussion of some of the basic aspects of human society — technology, economy, organization, and ideology — and how archaeologists try to comprehend these.

The segment on time stresses how difficult this concept is and how important for archaeology. We point out how there are different systems for reckoning time that allow us to break it up into more comprehensible portions. We focus specifically on geological time in this chapter and on archaeological time in subsequent chapters. The discussion of geological time outlines the history of the universe and the earth as a means for establishing our place in the cosmos and the antiquity of our presence. Several devices are used to convey the immensity of time, including the earth’s history in a week to emphasize what recent arrivals we humans really are. Emphasis is on the Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene as the epochs of our existence.

The second major theme of the book is change — both biological and cultural — and we spend several paragraphs on the subject of evolution as the mechanism of biological change. Cultural change is considered in the next section in the larger context of archaeology.

The largest section of this chapter is a brief primer on the principles of archaeology and deals with aspects of the discovery, analysis, and interpretation of information about the past. The section on discovery deals with aspects of fieldwork including survey and geophysical prospecting, testing, and excavation. The components of an excavation team the field director and crew, of site selection, mapping and site grids for locational information, and vertical and horizontal excavation are discussed.

The segment on the analysis of archaeological materials distinguishes between artifacts, ecofacts, and features and outlines the role of different specialists in the study of these remains. These specialties such as archaeozoology, archaeometry, bioarchaeology, or paleoethnobotany are discussed in blocks of text in subsequent chapters in the book. Features are foci of activities and hierarchically arranged from fireplaces to residences to settlements to regional groups. These sources of information — artifacts, ecofacts, and features — are the foundation of research and the analysis of these materials provides the substance for interpretation. The science and creativity of archaeology lies in bridging that gap between the information we recover and the questions we seek to answer.

Interpretation is a large and complex arena in archaeological research. Interpretation is the difficult process of trying to make sense of the data and to understand what happened in the past. Interpretation usually involves the harder questions of how and why things happened and changed in the past.

In this brief introduction we simplify this subject and concentrate on fairly clear and concrete aspects. We emphasize the questions that archaeologists seek to answer — about the past concerning larger concepts about the way of life of prehistoric peoples, how human societies coped with their physical and social environments, and how our predecessors viewed their world. We discuss aspects of society and human adaptation such as technology, economy, organization, and ideology as components of our interface with the world around us and as a way to satisfy needs and solve problems.

This first chapter ends with some thoughts on the relevance of archaeology and why we think it is important, an essential point for students to consider.