Archeological Sites - Cultural Formation

The four cultural formation processes are reuse, cultural deposition, reclamation, and disturbance. Reuse might include recycling, secondary use, or use by another party. Cultural deposition processes take cultural materials from the context in which they are used in a culture and place them in an environmental context; examples include discarded dishes, burials, and abandonments. Reclamation processes are those in which archeological materials are retrieved for reuse by a culture; examples include scavenging, looting of previously deposited artifacts, and archeological recovery. Disturbance processes alter the earth's surface and alter archeological materials, deposits and sites; examples include plowing and land leveling.