archaeological stratigraphy

306 Pages·2009·8.35 MB·English

cif
PRACTICES
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
STRATIGRAPHY
Edited by
Edward C. Harris, Marley R. Brown III,
and Gregory J. Brown
This book aims to bring together a number of examples which illustrate the development
and use of the Harris Matrix in describing and interpreting archaeological sites. This
matrix, the theory of which is described in the two editions of Edward Harris' previous
book, Principles oj Archaeolonical Stratinraphy, made possible for the first time a diagram
matic representation of the stratigraphic sequence of a site, no matter how complex. The
Harris Matrix, by showing in one diagram all three linear dimensions, plus time,
represents a quantum leap over the older methods which relied on sample sections only.
Here, seventeen essays present a sample of new work demonstrating the strengths and
uses of the Harris Matrix, the first published collection of papers devoted solely to
stratigraphy in archaeology. The crucial relationships between the Harris method, open
area excavation techniques, the interpretation of interfaces, and the use of single-context
plans and recording sheets is clarified by reference to specific sites, ranging from
medieval Europe, through Mayan civilisations to Colonial Williamsburg in the USA. This
book ,viII be of great value to all those involved in excavating and recording archaeological
sites and should help to ensure that the maximum amount of stratigraphic information
can be gathered from future investigations.
ACADEMIC PRESS ISBN 0-12-326445-6
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
LONDON • SAN DIEGO
NEW YORK • BOSTON
9 780123 264459 >
SYDNEY • TOKYO
Practices of
archaeological
stratigraphy
Edited by
EDWARD C. HARRIS
Bermuda Maritime Museum
Mangrove Bay
Bermuda
MARLEY R. BROWN III and GREGORY J. BROWN
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Williamsburg
Virginia
USA
ACADEMIC PRESS
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers
London San Diego New York
Boston Sydney Tokyo Toronto
ACADEMIC PRESS LIMITED
24-28 Oval Road
London NWl 70X
Ullited Stales Edilioll published by
ACADEMIC PRESS INC.
San Diego, CA 92101
Copyright © 1993 by
ACADEMIC PRESS LIMITED except for Chapter 9, © Journal of Field Archaeology
All rights reserved
No part of thjs book may be reproduced in any form, photostat, microfilm, or by any other
means, without written permission from the publishers
This book is printed on acid-free paper
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-12-326445-6
Typeset by P & R Typesetters Ltd, Salisbury, Wiltsbire
Prjnted and bound in Great Britain at tbe University Press, Cambridge
Contributors
B.A.P. Alvey, 63 Glencairn Road, London SW16 5DG, UK
D.1. Bibby, Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Wurttemberg, Brauneggerstrasse 60, 7750 Konstanz, Germany
G.]. Brown, Department of Archaeological Research, ColoJlial Williamsburg Foundation, P.O. Box
1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776, USA
M.R. Brown Ill, Department of Archaeological Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation,
P.O. Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776, USA
P.R. Clark, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 92a Broad Street, Canterbury, Kent, CTI 2LU, UK
M. Davies, 40 Parliament St, Sandy Bay, Hobart, Tasmania 7005, Australia
I.G. Trocoli, Catalan Society for Archaeology, C/ Bailen, 125, entr. la., 08014 Barcelona, Spain
R.H. Gerrard, Registrar, Collections Management, Toronto Historical Board, Marine Museum,
Exhibition Place, Toronto, Ontario M6K 3C3, Canada
N. Hammond, Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston,
MA 02215, USA
E.C. Harris, The Bermuda Maritime Museum, P.O. Box MA 273, Mangrove Bay MA BX, Bermuda
I. Herzog, Rheinisches Amr fiir Bodendenkmalpflege, Colmanstrasse 14,5300 Bonn 1, Germany
Z. Kobylillski, Institute for the History of Material Culture, Polish Academy of Sciences,
Swierczewskiego 105, 01-240 Warsaw, Poland
D.F. Muraca, Department of Archaeological Research, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, P.O.
Box 1776, Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776, USA
N. Pearson, York Archaeological Trust, 1 The Pavement, York Y01 2NA, UK
A. Praetzellis, Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University, 5503 Corbett Circle, Santa
Rosa, CA 95403, USA
D.M. Simmons, Research Department, Old Sturbridge Village, 1 Old Sturbridge Village Road,
Sturbridge, MA 01566-1198, USA
C. Spence, Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute for Historical Research, University of London,
34 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9EZ, UK
M.O. Stachiw, Research Department, Old Sturbridge Village, 1 Old Sturbridge Village Road,
Sturbridge, MA 01566-1198, USA
B.R. Stucki, Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, 1810 Hinman Avenue,
Evanston, IL 60201, USA
].R. Triggs, 247 Willow Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4E 3K6, Canada
T. Williams, Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 92a Broad Street, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 2 LU, UK
].E. Worrell, Research Department, Old Sturbridge Village, 1 Old Sturbridge Village Road,
Sturbridge, MA 01566-1198, USA

Contents
Foreword (Norman Hammond) Vll
SECTION l. Introduction 1
1. Interfaces in archaeological stratigraphy (Marley R. Brown III and Edward C. Harris) 7
SECTION II. Historical trends 21
2. Recording the archaeology of London: the development and implementation of the 23
DUA recording system (Craig Spence)
3. The contribution of the Harris Matrix to the development of Catalan archaeology 47
(Isabel G. Trocoli)
4. Polish medieval excavations and the Harris Matrix: applications and developments 57
(Zbigniew Kobylinski)
5. The limits of arbitrary excavation (Adrian Praetzellis) 68
SECTION Ill. Analysis in excavation 87
6. Single-coil text planlling: its role in on-site recording procedures and in post-excavation 89
analysis at York (Nicky Pearson and Tim Williams)
7. Building stratigraphic sequences 011 excavations: an example from Konstal1z, Germany 104
(David I. Bibby)
8. Three-dimensional assessment of activity areas in a shell midden: an example from the 122
Hoko River Rockshelter, State of Washington (Barbara Stucki)
9. Matrices and Maya archaeology (Norman Hammond) 139
SECTION IV. Phasing and structural analysis 153
10. Phasing stratigraphic sequences at Colonial Williamsburg (Gregory J. Brown and David 155
F. Muraca)
11. The application of the Harris Matrix to the recording of standing structures (Martin 167
Davies)
12. The total site matrix: strata and structure at the Bixby Site (David M. Simmons, Myron 181
O. Stachiw and John E. Worrell)
SECTION V. Post-excavation analysis 198
13. Computer-aided Harris Matrix generation (Irmela Herzog) 201
14. Interpreting archaeology with Hindsight: the use of three dimensions in graphic 218
recording and site analysis (Bryan A.P. Alvey)
15. Beyond crossmellds: stratigraphic analysis and the content of historic artefact assemblages 229
on urban sites (Richard H. Gerrard)
16. The seriation of multilinear stratigraphic sequences (John Triggs) 250
VI Contents
SECTION VI. Future developments 274
17. Sites withollt Principles: post-excavation analysis of' pre-matrix' sites (Peter R. Clark) 276
Index 293
Foreword
It is an honour to be asked to write a prefatory page to Practices of Archaeological
Stratigraphy, a book which shows how widely Edward Harris's matrix concept has become
used. In less than two decades the Harris Matrix has gone from being an esoteric recording
format of the Winchester Research Unit to a generic research tool of archaeologists across
the world. The applications in this book, by scholars working on sites from shell-middens
in the Pacific Northwest to medieval towns in Poland, from the Maya of the Central
American rainforest to the urban complexities of York with its two millennia of packed
urban deposits, show how deeply Harris's ideas have penetrated our professional
conscIOusness.
The idea of a stratigraphic diagram' which was procedurally rigorous, forcing the
excavator to account for every defined context in spatial and chronological relation to
its neighbours, and thus to think honestly about what the evidence meant throughout a
project rather than only at the stage of writing up, was both new and welcome when
Harris first introduced it in 1973. The standing section was still the principal means of
displaying stratigraphic data and elucidating its chronological and cultural significance,
although some British excavators, notably Brian Hope-Taylor at Yeavering, and Martin
Biddle and Birthe Kj0lbye-Biddle at Winchester, had begun to argue for the primacy of
the phase plan. The Harris Matrix was the ideal way of reconciling these two
complementary, yet in some ways contradictory, methods of putting a site on to paper
and making it comprehensible to others. It was value-neutral, not imposing anything on
the excavator except an obligation to think clearly, denying nothing but the chance to
fudge a difficult point. Its utility was not confined to ordering buried deposits, as some
of the applications cited in the second edition of Harris's classic Principles of Archaeological
Stl'atigraphy and some of the chapters in this book show, the matrix format is as relevant
to the above-ground archaeology of standing buildings such as Sandgate Castle in England
or the Bixby House in Massachusetts. In spite of the sniffy attitude taken by some
geoarchaeologists, the matrix, as a simple way of enforcing ordered thinking, is just as
capable of helping them to make sense of their deposits and interfaces.
The discipline imposed by using the matrix has resulted in some other important
developments, notably the idea of single-context planning. If each context has to be
accounted for separately in the matrix, then it should be plotted separately on site as well,
with a congeries of logically associated contexts being assembled into a phase plan at the
analytical rather than data-recovery stage, when a distanced perspective can be taken.
A second emphasis is on the interface as a distinct event horizon from the stratum
which it bounds, or which overlies it. I would part company with Harris only in his
terminology: while the surface of a stratum (context) may indeed be a layer interface, the
viii Foreword
feature interface is not necessarily a 'surface in its own right .. . formed by the destruction
of stratigraphy' (Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, 2nd edn, p. 54). This is making
a false distinction between the context, be it positive (a layer) or negative (a cut such as
a posthole), and the feature as a logical collocation of contexts, thereby obscuring the
distinction between units of observation and superordinate units of analysis. Such
disagreements, however arcane they may seem to those unconcerned with the precise
ordering and explanation of archaeological stratigraphy, are important; in accepting the
rigour imposed on our thinking by the matrix format we forgo Humpty Dumpty's privilege
of having a word mean just what we say it means, neither more nor less.
That precision in terminology is worth arguing over, however, is partly due to the
precision in recording that Edward Harris has urged upon us: in the same way that Lewis
Binford's A Consideration of Archaeological Research Design (1964) made us think about
why we did what we did, and David Clarke's Analytical Archaeology (1968) made us
clean up our fuzzy vocabulary and concepts, so Harris's The Stratigraphic Sequence: A
Question of Time (1975) and his subsequent books have made us think more deeply and
clearly about the vital process of converting the evidence of archaeological stratification
into the observations and interpretation of archaeological stratigraphy.
Norman Hammond
Department of Archaeology, Boston University'
Peabody Museum, Harvard University