Do archaeologists need to know about rocks?

Dr. dig responds:
Of course archaeologists need to know about rocks. They don't have to be specialists, but a good familiarity with rocks will help an archaeologist know if a particular rock used by a person for building a house, making a stone stool, or carving a piece of sculpture was a local stone or a stone that was imported from another region or even another part of the world.

Knowing what kind of stone has been worked or carved by people long ago will tell you a lot about their technology, what tools they needed to carve the stone, or their trade relations with other people far away (if the stone was imported).

People who work in museums can sometimes tell if a statue is an original or a fake just by knowing what stone was used to make it.

Some archaeologists have been able to figure out the trade routes the Romans used by learning more about the stone they used to build Rome and carve their statues and stone coffins (called sarcophagi). Some of the stone came from North Africa, while other stone came from as far away as Turkey and Greece! Archaeologists wouldn't know this if they hadn't learned about rocks.