JOAN CARTAN-HANSEN, HOST: Archaeology can be a dirty business.

Woman's Voice: "Alright!

I got another piece, Pete!"

CARTAN-HANSEN: But it's worth it because the artifacts that are discovered help piece together the puzzles of the past.

[MUSIC] To understand how an archaeological dig is organized, we asked University of Washington professor of anthropology, Dr. Peter V. Lape.

to explain the process.

DR. LAPE: You know, archeology is really, we're destroying a site.

We're digging it up.

We're tearing it apart to learn from it.

Everything we do is an attempt to make up for that destruction.

We dig down very slowly and carefully.

We're trying to see what we're destroying and record it before we completely destroy it.

STUDENT: "Do we want the coral in the middle to be counted as a separate rock or as part of the full rock there?"

DR. LAPE: So, everything we take out of a site we measure and record and photograph and map in where that thing came from.

So, like, at least in our heads we can put it back.

CARTAN-HANSEN: To see the archaeological process in action, we joined Dr. Lape in the Banda Islands of eastern Indonesia.

DR. LAPE: The Banda Islands are the only place in the world where nutmeg was produced.

And so because of that, they were attractive to people from all over the world who traveled to the Banda Islands to get nutmeg, to sell it in spice markets in Asia and Europe and Africa.

There's written documents about the history of the Banda Islands back to about maybe the 1300s.

But before that, there's no writing about Banda, so it's kind of mysterious.

So, we can use archeological evidence to investigate that deeper time history.

CARTAN-HANSEN: DR. Lape, along with a group of collegues are conducting an international field school called Program for Early Modern South East Asia or PEMSEA.

DR. LAPE: Early modern period is sort of, 1400 to 1800 A.D., really important period in world history.

Everything kind of changes.

You got global trade networks, world religions spreading, early colonialism, all kinds of stuff that now is like the world we live in.

So, there's a kind of heightened local interest in this history.

And people are seeing archaeology as a way to bring the Banda voice back into these big historical pictures.

CARTAN-HANSEN: An archaeological excavation consists of units that researchers dig into.

DR. LAPE: So a unit is essentially, a square hole that we precisely measure so that the next person who comes along can find it again, hopefully, and not dig there.

And we dig in precise layers, so we'll take, you know, layers out and then record them, and then they take the next layer out.

So, essentially, we're just trying to control our destruction.

TANNER MCGUIRE, PEMSEA STUDENT: I like being in the pit and excavating.

Finding these things and trying to put the story together and that it, it's an incredible experience.

DR. LAPE: We have two sites we're excavating.

And this has been very interesting archaeology.

We're able to use this building as our field lab, so it's a really nice situation for excavation.

LAURA PHILIPS, PEMSEA LAB DIRECTOR: We know that we can't save every little grain of dirt, but we want to be able to see some of those really tiny pieces.

So in every level we take a special sample which we call a flotation sample.

And this is our flotation station.

ERIN PAMPLIN, PEMSEA STUDENT: And what we're doing right now is stirring it and kind of agitating the materials.

And what will rise up is all the light material, which is usually plant matter.

And then we put it into this fine mesh strainer and it will catch all the plant material and you can start to see in here.

PHILIPS: And plants are very important because of course we eat plants and plants tell us what the environment is like.

Once we've, completed the light fraction process, then we take what's left at the bottom, which settled at the bottom of the buckets.

And we take the bucket and we pour it into the colander without the netting.

And that's where we're going to catch beads, small fish bone, maybe smaller pieces of ceramic.

PAMPLIN: I like it.

I think it's fun.

I feel like I'm just like playing in a mud kitchen, like making mud pies.

It's a nice way to stay cool, too when you play in the water.

EMILY CALKINS, PEMSEA STUDENT: So over here at the sorting station, we are taking the heavy fraction from the flotation.

Everything that sunk to the bottom.

And we go through with tweezers, very meticulously, and sort everything into little bags.

Yesterday I found two beads.

And so beads let us know a little bit about how people like to dress themselves, express themselves and bling themselves out.

DR. LAPE: So, at the end of your excavation, you've got boxes full of artifacts, you've got handwritten field notes, you've got maps, drawings, strat drawings, you've got all that.

Now the real work begins.

I mean, most of the time we say a week of excavation is a year of post-excavation work.

CARTAN-HANSEN: If you want to learn more about archaeology, check out the Science Trek website.

You'll find it at science trek dot org.

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