Archaeological sources and dating

Archaeology reconstructs the past from material remains rather than from texts alone. Excavation, stratigraphy, typology and scientific dating together let historians place a site in time and interpret how people lived. A classic example is radiocarbon dating of charcoal from a hearth, which gives an absolute date range for the layer in which it was found. Combined with pottery sequences and coin finds, such dates turn a mound of earth into a dated history of settlement.