FIRST LEGO League Challenge 2025-2026

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Ask an Archaeologist: Tech Edition

Ask an Archaeologist: Unearthing Challenges in Archaeology

Here are some common questions and trusted resources for your team to start digging into some of the challenges faced by archaeologists and the tools we use to understand people through the artifacts, texts, and architecture they left behind.

What are some of the common challenges archaeologists face?

Logistical and Practical Challenges

• Fundraising! Archaeological projects rely on grants, donations, and other forms of funding to pay for staffing, equipment, travel, scientific analysis, artifact and site conservation, etc.
• Lack of electricity and other modern facilities on site.
• The need for a wide variety of (sometimes expensive) excavation tools–everything from handheld tools such as pickaxes and trowels to larger tools such as trucks, portable scientific instruments, and ground-penetrating radar.

Research and Excavation Planning Challenges

• Pre-excavation research and deciding when and where to excavate. Today, archaeologists always start with a research question and then spend lots of time reading  articles, books, and excavation notebooks from past projects. Have others conducted research nearby in the past? What did they learn? Archaeologists also need to survey the broader landscape of a potential dig site from the air (using balloons, kites, cranes, cameras, drones, and satellite imagery) and talk to people on the ground who live nearby.

Fieldwork and Site Condition Challenges

• Potentially hazardous site conditions: sometimes we need to dig through garbage and outhouses!
• Working in the sun! We often have to block harsh sun while we work, not just to protect our bodies but also to protect our electronic devices.

Artifact Handling, Analysis, and Storage Challenges

• Studying, drawing, photographing, and digitizing artifacts. We archaeologists draw and photograph everything we find. We also often have to find joins between pieces of pottery or other broken artifacts, and have to physically support pots while they are being mended by conservators. Archaeologists also have to draw and photograph walls, architectural features, and sites more broadly, to create a record of what we find. Our aim these days is to make all of that information digital as well!
• The need for a wide variety of cleaning tools, materials, and workers for artifacts of many different types of materials (metal, bone, stone, ceramic…). On excavation, teams sometimes spend hours washing pottery!
• Keeping artifacts in good condition once they leave the ground. For example, bronze is known to disintegrate (sometimes within minutes!) due to a condition we call “bronze disease.”
• Storage space for finds. We need storage facilities that can withstand time and weather conditions, as well as bags and boxes that can keep artifacts safe from humidity, pests, etc.

Interpretation Challenges

• Considering multiple possible interpretations of what we find: many different stories can be told with the same data!
• Countering misconceptions about our field, such as “theories” about aliens and the “lost civilization” of Atlantis. We also sometimes have to remind people that we don’t study dinosaurs or rocks! Archaeologists study people through the things they left behind. And we don’t dig for “treasure” OR keep the things we find!

Public Engagement and Communication Challenges

• Forming and maintaining good relationships with local populations and governments where we are working. Collaboration is key.
• Making sites accessible to visitors: leading tours, having signs and pamphlets or other types of information available, maintaining websites and/or public social media accounts.
• Sharing our work with the public and other researchers. How can we share our findings as widely as possible?

Site Preservation Challenges

• Looting, vandalism, littering, and other human effects on sites: if we leave a site overnight or for months between seasons, we need to protect it.
• Environmental effects on sites, such as tree roots, animal burrows, erosion, flooding, and sea level rise.
• Getting and keeping sites clean, open, and presentable. For example, exposed mudbrick architecture needs to be protected in special ways to prevent it from being damaged by rain, wind, and other stresses.

Some Common Questions We’ve Gotten from Teams So Far

How does archaeology contribute to our understanding of humans (ancient and modern)?

By unearthing the material remains of the past, archaeologists can better understand how humans lived throughout history. People use physical objects of all kinds as they interact with the world around them, so studying those objects and thinking about how they might have been used in the past can help us to learn about how people lived in different times and places. There is no one right answer! Archaeology shows us the wonderful diversity of human beings, reminding us that there are many ways to experience the world, and to interact with its material objects and make meaning from them. By understanding our past, we can bring new perspectives to the present. Archaeology helps us to think about what it means to live within a whole range of experiences, and to better inform the future and how humans interact with one another.

What tools or technologies do archaeologists frequently use in their work?

It depends on what stage of research they are in, but the number one tool these days is definitely a computer! Whether archaeologists are doing initial research, recording their findings in a database, making spreadsheets to find out the distributions of different kinds of pottery, editing photos, making 3D models of sites or photos, or writing up a final report, journal article, or book manuscript–computers make it all possible! Aside from computers, there are many tools used in excavation such as trowels, plumb bobs, pick axes, paint brushes, cameras, handheld GPS devices, and total stations. Lab and conservation tools might include a flotation tank, scales, calipers, compass and protractor sets, microscopes and Scanning Electron Microscopes. Archaeologists with different scientific specialties will also employ highly technical analysis tools such as Ground-penetrating radar, LiDAR, magnetometry, portable X-ray fluorescence analyzers, micro-CT scanners, and more.

How has the field of archaeology evolved with the use of modern technologies?

One way to simplify this big question is to think about a specific site with a long history of excavations. Here’s an example from Corinth, Greece. In the late 1800s, the excavation employed a large number of people and primarily recorded intact artifacts like vases and sculptures. So much dirt was dug that they built a railcar system to move earth to an excavation dump! By the mid 1900s, the model changed to dig seasonally, only three months of the year. Fewer people were involved, and even the small fragments were recorded. Today, specialized tools like iDig, an archaeology app, are used to record artifacts and excavation layers, and archaeologists can use additional technologies like portable X-ray fluorescence to study traces of color on artifacts.

What skills or qualities are key for someone interested in archaeology?

Archaeologists have to be good team players, first and foremost. Everything we do in archaeology is collaborative, and teams working in the field are made up of many people, from specialists who work on pottery, to scientists to help us analyze what we find, to students just learning how to excavate—the experts of the future. Generally speaking, people who are interested in archaeology should understand that there are many different kinds of sources we use to learn about the past, such as artifacts and ancient texts, and that there is no single “truth” that we seek to know about the past—many answers are possible, scholarship in archaeology is a series of hypotheses and conversations, and we rarely ever know “the answer” for sure. Future archaeologists should also be interested in learning about people, rather than just the things they left behind; the work we do in archaeology is meant to help us learn more about communities and individuals’ lives in the past, but also about ourselves as humans more generally.

More Resources from the AIA

📖 U.S. based teams can order an ARCHAEOLOGY Inspire! Bundle from the AIA that includes 7 recent issues of ARCHAEOLOGY magazine and an Archaeology 101 handout. We have limited quantities, so order today!

🌍 If you want digital access to the entire run of ARCHAEOLOGY magazine going all the way back to 1948 that you can access from anywhere in the world, AIA Student memberships start at just $36/year.

• Archaeology 101: A beginner-friendly overview covering the basics of archaeological methods, terminology, and principles
• A Career in Archaeology: A personal and professional look at the field by Professor Andrea Berlin
• Glossary of Archaeological Terms: Key terms to support learning and classroom discussion
• List of bibliographies: check out the AIA’s recommendations for books about archaeology

Super Tips from Our Friends in Iowa

Our friends at the Office of the State Archaeologist in Iowa have put together a fantastic page explaining some of the most important things to know about archaeology. As a first step, check out their page and see if you learn something new about our field!

Hoping to talk to an archaeologist yourself?

Your team might consider signing up for the free Skype a Scientist program, which matches archaeologists (and other scientists!) with community groups around the world. To learn how to sign up, visit our Archaeologists in Classrooms page.

Looking for more?

Here are a few more resources we love to help you succeed:

• Exploring Archaeological Challenges: A Webinar for FIRST® LEGO® League UNEARTHED(TM) Robotics Teams by the Society for American Archaeology
• South Carolina Department of Natural Resources Heritage Trust Program Archaeo-Tech Film Series
• The Society for American Archaeology’s Education & Outreach page
• The Society for Historical Archaeology’s Public Links Database
• U.S. National Park Service Junior Archaeologist Activity Book
• U.S. National Park Service: “The Past Has Layers”
• Archaeology Magazine’s content related to robots
• “Is a Career in Archaeology Right for You?” by K. Kris Hirst
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Quick Facts about Anthropologists and Archaeologists
• Two issues of the Society of American Archaeology’s Archaeological Record about careers in archaeology: March 2011 and May 2017