Practice question · True or false
Seriation can put assemblages in the right order without telling you which end of that order is the earliest.
Hints
- The method uses changing proportions of styles.
- Order is not direction.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Seriation produces a sequence from the rise and fall of style frequencies, but the sequence is directionless until it is anchored, by a radiocarbon date, a stratified deposit or a historical link. Read the wrong way round it gives a perfectly coherent and entirely reversed chronology.
Practise Artifact Typology and Seriation
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