The first vessels of the Southwest region of North America were woven baskets and string bags used for transportation, storage, and other needs. This Basketmaker tradition started roughly 4,000 years ago and continued through approximately A.D. 750. While undecorated gray ware was occasionally used, it wasn't until 1,200 years ago that ceramics began to play a large role in daily life. Along with other societal changes during this time, ceramics were suddenly much more varied in shape (pitchers, ladles, bowls, jars, plates). Three distinctive regional traditions emerged: the Pueblo or Anasazi tradition, the Hohokam tradition, and the Mogollon culture. These cultures each occupied a different region of the Southwest and had distinctive cultural practices, identifying features, and pottery decoration. Archaeologists can identify these cultures through their artifacts, traditions, and links to modern day residents of this region. Many modern day Native American cultures claim links to these peoples as their ancestors and continue to practice many of the same traditions today.

Many different animals besides humans use tools, but making such diverse and specialized tools is a trait characteristic of our species in particular. These skills separate humans from other primates. Prehistoric tools were made from many different types of materials, including stone, wood, animal bones, and antlers. Eventually modern humans learned how to make tools out of metals like copper and iron. Early tools come in many varieties, including points for spears and arrows, axes, sinkers, atlatls, digging sticks, knives, drills, scrapers, awls, and others. Tools allowed humans to become skilled hunters and fisherman. Prehistoric humans also used stone tools to help them perform daily activities. Tools like axes, scrapers, and awls were used to process animal kills for food preparation and to turn animal hides into clothing. Prehistoric humans also used tools to work wood and plant materials into shelters. By using tools, humans exerted some control over their environment and were able to influence and change it. This allowed them to live in more diverse climates and spread throughout the world.

Humans have always manipulated their environment, whether by acquiring food, making and using tools, or other aspects of daily life. They are constantly interacting with their environment on a daily basis. By using the available materials, humans have created shelter, made tools, created containers and vessels, and produced items of personal and cultural significance. Many of these resources are naturally occurring, such as stones, minerals, animal bones, or organic fibers from plants, while others are made from combining materials. The process of acquiring these materials and the manufacturing process can be traditional practices that are passed down from one generation to another. Because materials are unique to the location of different communities and cultures, by studying the types of materials, as well as animal remains found and the processes used to manipulate them, anthropologists and researchers can learn about the daily activities and lifestyles of the cultures they are studying. In what ways do you interact with your environment on a daily basis?

Archaeologists and researchers use the broken pieces of pottery or ceramics ("sherds") that they find during their search for and excavation of ancient settlements to learn many things about the people who once lived there. These pieces of pottery can provide clues about the age of the settlement that lies buried below the surface and the types of activities that took place there. Just by looking at the sherd, archaeologists can often recognize the size, shape, and date of the vessel based on the sherd's shape, the material used to temper the vessel, and the designs incised into or painted onto its surface. The date of the vessel will also apply to the settlement underneath the surface. Ancient societies changed the shape of their pottery vessels and their designs over time, sometimes quite rapidly, and archaeologists have been able to develop "ceramic chronologies" for different regions of the world. They do this by excavating and dating (using carbon-14 or other methods) ancient settlements of different ages and determining what the pottery of different time periods looked like.

The discipline of archaeology has changed dramatically since the time when average people were searching for strange or exotic objects. Today's archaeologists carefully excavate sites by recording the context and stratigraphic relationship of the objects they recover. Archaeologists are careful to take detailed notes during the entire process. When people continue to live in the same location for a long period of time, they build on the remains of those who lived there before, thus creating layers of remains that can be studied to learn how people lived and how they interacted with other groups. Excavation, however, is only part of the process of archaeology. Today the archaeologist may use techniques of the chemical or physical sciences to study materials used in the past and to determine where they were made and if they were brought into a site from somewhere else. Another approach is that of experimental archaeology where archaeologists attempt to recreate the objects of the past to understand the process by which the objects were made. Examples of experimental archaeology might be making tools (e.g., flintknapping) or by attempting to recreate some special type of pottery.