Artifact ID Academy is a free, ad-supported study tool for learning to identify North American artifacts — projectile points, pottery, and the stone tools of everyday life — and for learning to read the evidence that gives them meaning.
It exists because that knowledge is disappearing faster than it is being written down. Collections get scattered, provenance is forgotten, and the person who knew what a piece was and where it came from is not always around to be asked. Our goal is to put that knowledge in public hands, for free, so the history of the people who made these objects survives for the generations that come after us.
Who is behind this
Artifact ID was founded by Aaron Johnson, Owner and Developer at Native Strategic Development, who builds and maintains both this Academy and the Artifact ID reference library at artifactid.org.
Artifact ID is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or speaking for any museum, university, tribal government, or state or federal agency. Where a lesson states something as established, it reflects published typological literature; where the record is uncertain or contested, the lesson says so instead of picking a side.
What the Academy offers
Everything on the site is free and open, with no account, no sign-in, and no paywall.
- Study questions across five tracks: Projectile Points, Pottery, Stone Tools, Artifact Basics, and Archaeology & History.
- Guided visual lessons that walk a single artifact through discovery, inspection, measurement, comparison and identification. Eight are published today, of thirteen planned.
- Daily challenges, experience levels, badges and streaks, so returning to study is worth something.
- The entire site in English and Spanish, questions and lessons included.
- Progress kept in your own browser. There is no account to lose and no server holding a record of what you studied.
How the material is made
Lessons are built from measured specimen records — real length, width, thickness and blade geometry, with the outline traced from the artifact itself. An artifact is never mocked up with stand-in imagery to fill a gap in the series. If the photographs and measurements for a type are not finished, that lesson stays marked as coming rather than shipping as a placeholder.
Questions are written against published typology and archaeological reference material, and every one carries an explanation of why the answer is what it is. The point is not to score well on a quiz; it is to be able to look at an unfamiliar piece afterward and know what to ask of it.
The reference library at artifactid.org is the other half of the same effort: contributors document artifacts from their own collections, with photographs, measurements and provenance, so the material behind future lessons is real and traceable.
How it is paid for
The Academy is supported by advertising served through Google AdSense. That is what keeps it free to use and free of an account requirement. Ads are kept out of a quiz in progress and out of a lesson, because interrupting someone mid-question is the fastest way to make a study tool useless.
We do not sell artifacts, broker sales, appraise, or take a commission on anything. Nothing on this site is a listing.
What the Academy is not
It is a teaching tool, not an authority. It does not authenticate artifacts, does not appraise them or estimate value, and an identification you reach here is a study exercise rather than a professional opinion. For anything that carries legal, financial or scientific weight, consult a qualified archaeologist or a recognised institution.
We ask everyone who uses the Academy to collect and study lawfully and ethically: respect private property, respect federal and state antiquities law and the protections that apply to human remains and funerary objects, and never dig a site to feed a collection. An artifact taken out of context loses most of what it had to tell us, and that loss is permanent.
Get in touch
Corrections, questions, and reports of anything wrong on the site are genuinely welcome — write to admin@artifactid.org. If a lesson or a question is wrong, we would rather hear it than keep teaching it.