Turning Objects into Data
A thousand potsherds are noise until you classify them. Typology sorts artifacts into types by shared attributes like form, material, decoration, and technique. A good type is one that clusters in time or space so its presence carries information. Types are tools, not truths: the type of a pot is a hypothesis that these fragments were made to one shared idea.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Attribute | A single observable feature like rim shape, temper, or glaze color |
| Type | A recurring bundle of attributes |
| Assemblage | All the material from one context, the type mix at one moment |
| Industry | Types sharing a technological lineage over time |
Seriation and Sequence Dating
Before radiocarbon, seriation ordered sites without stratigraphy by a fact of fashion: a style is rare when new, becomes common, peaks, then fades. Plotting each type frequency yields battleship curves. Flinders Petrie invented sequence dating in the 1890s to order Egyptian graves by pottery types.
The Direction Catch: Seriation delivers sequence but not polarity; battleship curves look identical run forwards or backwards. An external anchor like C-14 or a historical link tells you which end is early. It is a relative method requiring an absolute anchor.