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Archaeological Classification: Patterns in Time and Space

Learn about the importance of organizing and classifying archaeological data into meaningful patterns, and how this contributes to our understanding of material culture changes over time and across space. Explore the concepts of typology, assemblages, components, and phases in the field of archaeology.

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Archaeological Classification: Patterns in Time and Space

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  1. Chapter 9 The Dimensions of Archaeology: Time, Space, and Form

  2. Outline • After the Excavation: Conservation and Cataloging • Archaeological Classification • Space-Time Systematics • Conclusion: Space-Time Systematics and Archaeological Objectives

  3. Patterns: Time and Space • Archaeologists document patterns in how material culture changes through time and across space. • Organizing data into meaningful patterns is vital to the field of archaeology.

  4. After the Excavation: Conservation and Cataloging • As a rule of thumb, for every week spent excavating, archaeologists spend 3 to 5 weeks or more cleaning, conserving, and cataloging the finds. • Cataloging is essential. • Without the catalog, provenience is lost, and without provenience an artifact’s value to future researchers is greatly reduced.

  5. Typology • Classification of artifacts into types. • Archaeology’s basic unit of classification is termed a type. • Types are abstractions imposed by the archaeologist on a variable batch of artifacts. • We formulate a classification with a specific purpose in mind.

  6. Three Major Types of Types • Morphological - A descriptive grouping of artifacts whose focus is on similarity rather than function or chronological significance. • Temporal types are morphological types that have specific chronological meaning for a particular region. • Functional types reflect how objects were used in the past.

  7. Two Prehistoric Stone Disks Excavated from Ventana Cave

  8. Doing Typology • A good typology possesses two crucial characteristics: • Minimize the differences within each created type and maximize the differences between each type. • The typology must be objective and explicit. This means that the result should be replicable by any trained observer.

  9. A Great Basin Projectile Point and Some Data Recorded From It

  10. Attribute • A characteristic that distinguishes one artifact from another based on: • Size • Surface texture • Form • Material • Method of manufacture • Design pattern

  11. Relationship between Attributes of Weight and Proximal Shoulder Angle for the Great Basin Projectile Points

  12. Mousterian • A culture from the Middle Paleolithic (“Middle Old Stone Age”) period that appeared throughout Europe after 250,000 and before 30,000 years ago. • Mousterian artifacts are frequently associated with Neanderthal human remains.

  13. Projectile Point Key: Central Great Basin

  14. North American Culture Areas

  15. Southwestern Archaeological Cultures, or Traditions

  16. Phase • A block of time that is characterized by one or more distinctive artifact types. • Example: a particular kind of pottery, housing style, and/or projectile point • Phases are defined by temporal types, items of material culture that show patterned changes over time.

  17. Assemblages and Components • Archaeological sites consist of assemblages, collections of artifacts recovered from some unit of provenience. • We might then cluster these assemblages into components. • A component is considered a culturally homogeneous unit within a single site.

  18. Relationship of Archaeological Sites to Concepts of Component and Phase

  19. Time-space Systematics

  20. Quick Quiz

  21. 1. Cataloging is essential, because: • archaeologists spend so much time on this process • without this step, data would decay • without the catalog, provenience is lost • All of the above.

  22. Answer: C • Cataloging is essential because without the catalog, provenience is lost. • Without provenience an artifact’s value to future researchers is greatly reduced.

  23. 2. ______ is the classification of artifacts into types.

  24. Answer: typology • Typology is the classification of artifacts into types.

  25. 3. Archaeological sites consist of ________, collections of artifacts recovered from some unit of provenience, that are then clustered into _______.

  26. Answer:assemblages, components • Archaeological sites consist of assemblages, collections of artifacts recovered from some unit of provenience, that are then clustered into components

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