For example, [this](https://i.cbc.ca/1.6816670.1682003854!/fileImage/httpImage/1-000-year-old-canoe.jpg) 1,000 year old canoe was found in a North Carolina lake. How did they discover that it was a canoe? To me it looks like every other piece of wood at the bottom of a lake. They can’t study every piece of debris they find at a lake to tell which are artifacts and which arent
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For a lot of artefacts like you describe looking for tool marks can be a good indicator thst something was shaped deliberately rather than by chance.
A stick that breaks off of a tree, lays on the ground, maybe begins to rot, falls into a river and is bashed about on rocks as it flows downstream will have very different marks and shape (to the trained eye) than a piece that was cut and shaped for a specific purpose by a human hand.
Training.
A field botanist, for example, will **see** and identify any plant on a trip – to him they are individuals – while to the layman it’s just undifferentiated “vegetation”. Same for birds, mushrooms, fish, insects, &c.
Similarly for human artefacts. When a plane flies by you probably just notice, if you even look up, “a plane”. Not so for a dedicated plane watcher. (For my part I’m absolutely not interested in cars, thus they all look alike to me.)
So let’s complete that to “training + interest”.
For the canoe case, an archaeologist will take a hard look at any piece of wood which could potentially be an artefact, drawing from his experience of similar objects, looking for tool marks, wear, the nature of the wood (does it come from the region or from far away) and so on, while the average Joe just glances at “a soaked log” and walks on.
It’s like reading the ingredient label in foods. Most people see the normal ones, salt sugar whatever and then their eyes glaze over once they get to the preservatives and emulsifiers and ph buffers and such. I happen to know about the qualities of common ones so I like to actually read the details and think about the mechanism behind the preservation, gives insight on how to store and optimize usage in cooking. Same deal for archeologists finding artefacts, it’s not just the item it’s the manufacture, the purpose, the material limitations, the technology, how it can be used to discover the past
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