Most of the laboratory work associated with digging archaeological sites is done months or years after the fieldwork is completed. Analysis is quite time-consuming, and may include reconstruction of pots, identification of plant residues, lithic analysis of any stone tools recovered from the site, and analysis of the human remains, among many other types of research.
But during the excavations, much preliminary processing of the artifacts recovered from the site is completed. Artifacts are washed and cataloged as they are pulled out of the field, so that the archaeologists may have additional information about what they're finding, as they find it. This cataloging represents an important first step in the analysis, because detailed information about where an artifact came from may prove of vital importance in the months to come.
The Maya Research Program has a formal laboratory, in which artifacts such as pottery, lithics, groundstone, and animal and human bone are studied in detail. Permission to remove artifacts from Belize is not given to any archaeological project except under special circumstances: for radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating, isotope analysis, and Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA), all of which require special laboratory facilities not found in Belize.
