Artifacts

How can you ensure that you are learning everything your artifacts have to teach you? Ewen explores a variety of methods and techniques used to prepare, protect, and analyze artifacts once they are in the lab. In brief, user-friendly sections, he outlines the basic principles of identification, classification, quantification, data manipulation, and analysis. Students will find that Ewen's suggestions point out fruitful areas of analysis, yet do not dictate the researcher's approach. Examples drawn from 16th century Spanish sites in the Americas introduce students to the hows and whys of archaeological lab work. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Charles R. Ewen received his B.A. at the University of Minnesota (1978), M.A. at Florida State (1983), and Ph.D. at the University of Florida (1987). After graduation, he codirected excavations at the Governor Martin site (the site of Hernando de Soto's first winter encampment) for the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research. The next stop was Arkansas, where he was an assistant professor and director of the Arkansas Archeological Survey's Sponsored Research Program. He joined the faculty of East Carolina University (ECU) in 1994, where he is a professor in the Anthropology Department. He also serves as director of the Phelps Archaeology Lab on the ECU campus. His research interests include archaeological method and theory, cultural resource management, and historical archaeology, specifically the Contact and Colonial periods. Like most archaeologists, however, circumstances have led him to work on nearly every kind of site, from prehistoric villages to Civil War fortifications and twentieth-century homesteads. He has established a research program in eastern North Carolina, conducting projects at Tryon Palace Historic Sites and Gardens, Hope Plantation, Historic Edenton, and the Newbold-White house.