Hopefully you have learned something about archaeology. Archaeology is usually not as glamourous as the Indiana Jones movies would suggest. Rarely do archaeologist find golden objects. Much of the work is tedious and time consuming. Excavation can be dirty and frustrating. Yet the past is something that we are interested in. Archaeology is the study of the past with a focus on human behavior. As such, it is a study that intrigues us tremendously. We want to know about the past. About things that happened that were perhaps important. The finds are perhaps not great but they were the product of human behavior made by people who were not unlike ourselves in many ways. They may have lived in a different culture, but they were human. They tell their story through what they made and left for us. We are the detectives who try to learn something from what is left. We systematically probe and observe what we can and hopefully infer some understanding from what we find. Armed with as much as we can arm ourselves with in terms of knowledge, we approach the past with hopes of learning. The ultimate quest of archaeological research is to find cause and effect explanations of human behavior over the centuries to help us understand the present.

The Society for American Archaeology: Definition of Archaeology

You have some options at this point. The first option is to RETURN to the beginning. The second and third options involve moving through two rather simple, yet instructive. The first of these involves looking at three archaeological sites found along a canal system off the Salt River near Mesa. To take advantage of this option, go to the Canal Reconstruction exploration. The second of these involves looking a a series of house features from an archaeological site in Tempe. You will have to answer a series of questions about the nature of settlement shifts within this site area. To take advantage of this option, go to the Site Reconstruction exploration. Both of these areas illustrate how archaeologists attempt to understand changing demonstrations of culture at different levels of investigation.

For a more in depth exploration, you can attempt to reconstruct the chronological and artifact record of a site called Los Hornos. This is a more difficult task that will require some time to complete satisfactorily. The insights may be well worth the effort.