At Kent State University, archaeology doesn’t just begin in the field; it happens in a lab where artifacts are rebuilt, tested and deliberately broken. Under the direction of Metin Eren, Ph.D. and associate professor of anthropology, students are recreating the past to better understand how ancient people actually lived. 

Founded in 2016, the archaeology lab is built on a simple yet powerful idea: to understand archaic technology, you must recreate it. Students replicate spear points, blades and other artifacts, then use them in controlled experiments to see how they break, wear and function. Those marks, subtle chips, edge rounding and impact fractures all become the basis for interpreting real archaeological finds.

That destructive process is the key to understanding how ancient people used their tools, and how technologies evolved over nearly three million years. 

One of the lab’s centerpieces is an Instron materials tester, a fancy hydraulic press built to crush, twist and snap objects while measuring every ounce of force and energy involved. A stone point or blade replica goes into the machine; what comes out is a precise record of how strong it was, how it failed and what that tells us about the people who relied on tools like this to survive.

The real power of the lab isn’t just its equipment; it’s the way it teaches students. For Professor Eren, this work is about more than mastering a set of technical skills. It’s a different way of teaching students how knowledge is made.

“When students work in the lab, they’re not just a consumer of knowledge, they’re now a producer of knowledge,” Eren said. “They get to understand at a much deeper level.” 

In the lecture, you’re given the answers: the summary of what the data means. In the lab, you handle the data yourself. Through hands-on experimentation, students learn how evidence is generated, how conclusions are drawn and how to test whether those conclusions are valid. The fact that students now become producers of knowledge, matters well beyond archaeology; they shape how students make decisions and interpret information in their everyday lives, Eren shared. 

“Universities really are just knowledge factories,” he said. “The job of the university is to create knowledge through research then disseminate that found data.”

Students in the laboratory design projects, measure artifacts, build replicas, run tests and interpret the results. By the time they’re done, they understand not just what we know about the past, but how we came to know it. That experience arms students to think more critically about any kind of data far beyond archaeology. 

The lab’s research extends well outside Kent’s campus. Through a long-standing partnership with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, students use the museum’s collections as raw materials for new research questions. Reproducing artifacts from the museum and testing them in the lab allows students and faculty to move what would normally be sitting on a shelf into something that can be used for experimentation without using the original artifact.

The partnership with the museum ties the experimental archaeology lab into a much larger story. The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is internationally known for its research in human origins and best known for its role in the discovery of Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found by paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson. 

It’s precisely that legacy that drew the current Curator of Human Origins, Dr. Emma Finestone, to Cleveland.

“An important part of being a researcher and academic is also training students who are pursuing degrees at undergraduate and graduate levels in the field,” Finestone said. “They also provide a new perspective to us when they work.” 

Finestone is a key figure in helping make the museum more accessible to the general public, something that can benefit not only the public but university students as well.

“It’s something I love about the museum. It’s easy to bring together both the public and local community together with the academic and research side of science,” she said.

Funding for the laboratory comes from a mix of external grants and internal university support. When it comes to internal funding, the university sets aside a small, yet usable budget between $1,000 to $3,000. This money often goes directly to support student research and even paying undergrad students a stipend.

“Sometimes [funds] are through grants.” Eren said. “The lab has won some grants to the National Science Foundation or through the Ohio History Connection.” 

Unlike other disciplines of science, the experimental archaeology laboratory has not faced major difficulties in securing both external and internal funding. 

Even with such a robust laboratory and support from a world-renowned museum, if there’s one attitude Eren wants the public to share, it isn’t just excitement about Stone Age tools or museum collections, it’s a habit of questioning. 

Trust in science, he argued, should come not from blind faith in authority, but from a mutual understanding of the evidence. The experimental archaeology lab models that process every day: questioning, testing, breaking, measuring and even more questioning.

“It’s great to trust science, and you should put your trust in science,” Eren said. “But it’s also important to understand it, and you’ll have greater trust in it if you comprehend it.”

Adrian Pellegrini is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].