Modern historical archeology, like archeology in general, is based on two main premises. First, where man has lived for any length of time, he has left behind artifacts—bits of food, broken pottery, tools, and ornaments—that tell us something of his way of life. Second, human behavior is, to a certain extent, patterned and predictable, and similar artifacts will be found on similar sites. Thus, even if two household sites are separated by hundreds of years of technological innovation, they may yield utensils used for roughly the same purposes. If two contemporary sites produce artifacts of the same style and workmanship, then their inhabitants shared at least some aspects of a single culture, and variations between the sites can provide valuable clues to adaptations of that culture to different circumstances. The distinction between prehistoric and historical archeology is based not on differences in technology but on the presence or absence of written records. While prehistoric archeologists reconstruct ancient cultures primarily from artifactual evidence, historical archeology employs both documents and material remains to study literate societies and the pre-literate populations whom they influenced. In much of Europe and Asia, the historic period begins centuries before Christ, but in North America, historical archeology is concerned with the period of recorded European exploration and occupation extending from the sixteenth century to the present. From these four centuries we have innumerable written records covering a vast array of subjects. But although these records contain a wealth of information, they cannot always be trusted to be either thorough or accurate. In addition, historians are often most interested in aspects of daily life—such as health, diet, and the living conditions of the unlettered poor—that are frequently omitted altogether from written records. By examining the record of activities that people have left in the soil, archeology can provide written history with a comparatively unbiased account of the economic conditions underlying historical change. Probably the most obvious indicators of past living conditions are buildings, around which most human activities are centered. On most historic sites these include not only residences but also a variety of outbuildings such as privies, barns, and work buildings that are crucial to understanding the site as a whole. This is especially true of such complex institutions as plantations, where hundreds of people may have lived and worked over an area of many acres. Since many of these buildings have long since disappeared, the first task of the excavator is to find them by tracing the concentrations of debris that, fortunately for archeologists, our ancestors scattered freely around their dwellings and workplaces.