Topic 2: How historians and archaeologists investigate

history, including excavation and archival research

 • History is a journey of
discovery through time.
What is history? • knowledge of history
helps us to understand
our heritage (everything
that has come down to
us from the past).
• we start to understand
where our ideas,
languages, laws and
many other aspects of
our lives come from.
• we can also develop
more open minds and
learn to appreciate
cultures that are
different from our own.
 • We can never
What is history? understand the time we
live in or what the future
may hold if we do not
understand the journey
that bought us to this
point.
• For Example: the
Pandemic; our family
history; Australia’s
involvement in wars;
history of Australia;
Australia Day; ANZAC
Day; Black Lives Matter
movement.
 • By understanding the past we might be able to
avoid repeating past mistakes and make our world
What is history? a better place in the future. 
• For Example: the Holocaust; Remembrance Day.
What is history?
• A knowledge of history is
important in our everyday
lives too.
• history gives us great
personal pleasure: more
enjoyment from travel,
books, movies when they
know about the history
that shaped the places
they visit or the stories
they read or watch on the
screen.  
 • Historians try to understand

What do HISTORIANS and explain the past by

examining its remains – fossils,
bones, books, ruins – known as
do? sources or evidence.
• they try and build up a picture
of how people in other times
lived and acted.
• to make sense of past ideas,
customs and beliefs, the ways
people were ruled and how
they made their living.
• to understand and explain how
people’s lives were shaped by
other people and events, what
they thought about their times
and how they bought about
changes in their own world.
What do HISTORIANS • Historians use sources to

do? generate theories (known as

hypotheses) about people and
events from the past.
• the process of investigating
history therefore involves
finding sources, asking
questions about these sources,
and then creating hypotheses.
• a hypothesis is an opinion about
what might have happened,
based on available evidence.
• it is an attempt to explain
something for which there are
not enough facts to say for sure
what might have occurred.
 • When historians research
historical periods during which
written records were kept, they
Archival Research often find many of their primary
sources in archives.
• these are organised collections of
records which may be physical or
online.
• Types of materials found in
archives include manuscripts,
letters, photographs, moving
images and sound materials,
artwork, books, diaries, artefacts,
documents.
• Using an Archive: if you wanted
to research a relative’s
involvement in a war Australia
participated in, you would access
the Australian War Memorial’s
archives in Canberra, either at
the Memorial or online.
 • Oral history is a field of study and a
method of gathering, preserving and
interpreting the voices and memories
of people, communities, and
participants in past events. 
• oral history is not intended to
present a final, verified, or ‘objective’
narrative of events, or a
comprehensive history of a place.
• it is a spoken account, reflects
personal opinion offered by the
narrator, and as such it is subjective. 
• oral histories may be used together
with other primary sources as well as
secondary sources to gain
understanding and insight into
history.
• LEFT: Personal testimonies from
Oral History members of Australia’s Stolen
Generations have contributed
significantly to our understanding of
this period of history. 
 What do ARCHAEOLOGISTS do?
Archaeologists are the people who uncover and interpret
sources from the past, such as the remains of people,
buildings and artefacts.

They often take part in archaeological digs.

they conduct archaeological digs, which are sites known

(or thought) to contain artefacts or items of interest from
the past that is roped off and dug up by archaeologists.

Archaeology is the scientific study of the material

remains of past human life and activities.

16 February 1923: Archaeologist Howard Carter discovers

King Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus
 • Historians cannot rely on only one
source of evidence for an
Excavation: investigation.

Archaeological digs • Historians need to act like

detectives, constantly searching
for clues about the past to gather
as much evidence as possible.
• when conducting investigations
into the ancient past, historians
rely on the work of many other
experts, including biologists,
geneticists, paleontologists and
archaeologists.
• many of these experts work
together at archaeological digs,
which are an important source of
evidence of the ancient past.
• Archaeologists uncover sources of
evidence of past peoples.
Excavation: • This includes not only skeletons but
also the places where they lived and
travelled, such as the ruins of towns,
Archaeological digs temples and tombs; artefacts they
made such as pottery, weapons, tools
and coins; inscriptions and stone reliefs
they carved; even rubbish dumps
(middens) and fire sites.
• some sources are so old they have
turned into fossils or remain only as a
‘shadow’ or crust in the soil.   
• some archaeologists work underwater,
looking for sources on or beneath the
seabed, such as old shipwrecks.
• most sources found on land are buried.
• they might be covered by the silt of
past folds, sand blown by the wind, or
forests that have grown over them.
Excavation: • Once a site is discovered,
archaeologists rope off or otherwise

Archaeological digs
protect the site, called the ‘dig’.
• it is then marked off into segments, in
a grid’.
• this allows the precise location of any
items that are found to be specified.
• after surveying the site, archaeologists
remove overlying rocks and dirt.
• ancient objects can be extremely
delicate, so archaeologists need to
take great care uncovering them.
• once a source has been fully exposed
or excavated, the archaeologist
photographs and numbers it, and
records details of its size, appearance
and exact location.
 • When archaeologists and historians
find objects from the past, they often
need help from scientists who use the
Scientific Techniques latest techniques and technology to
gather information.
• many of these techniques are used to
assess the likely age of sources.
• scientific techniques need to be used
in combination with other historical
techniques and evidence to provide a
complete explanation of the past.
• scientific dating techniques are
divided into TWO types:
•(i) absolute dating techniques (AD)
which allow the age of an object to be
stated as precisely as possible (in years).
•(ii) relative dating techniques (RD),
which can only determine whether an
object is of an earlier or more recent
date relative to (compared with) another
object.

Scientific Dating Techniques:
(1) Radiocarbon dating (AD)
• All living things contain a particular
type of carbon called C14, which is
why we are called carbon-based
life forms.
• this carbon is continuously
renewed while an organism is
alive.
• living things stop absorbing C14
when they die.
• C14 is radioactive, which means
that, over time, it breaks down at a
known rate into a different type of
carbon.
• Scientists use special equipment to
work out how much C14 is still
present in once-living organisms.
• using that information, they can
work out how long ago the
organism died, and therefore how
old it is.
 Scientific Dating
Techniques: (2)
Dendrochronology (AD)
• Scientists can date a tree by studying the
growth rings in a cross-section of its trunk.
• each year in a tree’s life, a new ring forms.
• it varies in shape and width according to
the conditions that year.
• it has two parts:
(i)   a light part (spring growth); and             
 (ii) a  dark part (summer/autumn growth)
• Scientists can study these rings between
trees to determine their age.
• sometimes experts can calculate the
relative age of wooden artefacts, such as
bowls and floorboards.
• this is possible if they can match the ring
patterns in the wood with those of local
trees of the same species.  
 Scientific Dating
Techniques (3)
Stratigraphy (RD)
• Involves analysing sources found in
the different strata of earth.
• strata are layers marking different
geological time periods.
• since the layers of rocks are
generally youngest on top and
oldest on the bottom, items found
in the lowest strata will generally be
oldest.
• in an archaeological dig, scientists
may know that a particular stratum
(the singular from of strata) is 1000
years old.
• this means that the items excavated
from that stratum will probably be
of a similar age.
 Scientific Dating
Techniques: (4)
Fluorine dating (RD)
• Bones can be dated using
fluorine dating.
• bones absorb the chemical
element fluorine from the
soil in which they are
immersed.
• the longer that bones lie in
the earth, the more
fluorine they absorb from
the soil.
• the more fluorine it has,
the older the bone.
 Other Scientific Techniques:
(5) DNA analysis
• All living organisms (except some viruses) contain
deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.
• DNA holds the genetic code that determines how a
living thing develops and operates.
• it is comparable to the ones and zeros that make
up computer code and tell your software what to
do.
• DNA is sometimes preserved in the remains of
once-living organisms.
• Scientists can learn a lot from studying DNA.
• that can tell what type of organism it is and how
closely related it is to other species and to other
individuals of the same species. 

Other Scientific Techniques:
(6) Ice-core sampling
• Ice-core samples are long
cylinders of ice that have been
drilled from thick ice sheets in
Antarctica and Greenland.
• as ice forms in the gradually
increasingly build-up of annual
layers of snow, lower layers are
older than upper layers.
• this means that an ice core
contains ice formed over many
years.
• air trapped at various sections
along an ice core provides
evidence of what the atmosphere
was like at different periods in
the past.
• Scientists can then form
conclusions about climate at a
particular time.   
 Other Scientific
Techniques: (7)
Palynology
• Is the study of microscopic
organic compounds (such as
pollen) that are fond in soil.
• taking soil cores enables
scientists to analyse fossilized
pollen and find out how plant
life in a particular area has
changed over thousands of
years
• RIGHT: Spore-pollen species
from the Eocene of southern
South America.