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Concept
Relationship (archaeology)
Summary
An archaeological relationship is the position in space and by implication, in time, of an object or context with respect to another. This is determined, not by linear measurement but by determining the sequence of their deposition – which arrived before the other. The key to this is stratigraphy.
Archaeological material would, to a very large extent, have been called rubbish when it was left on the site. It tends to accumulate in events. A gardener swept a pile of soil into a corner, laid a gravel path or planted a bush in a hole. A builder built a wall and back-filled the trench. Years later, someone built a pig sty onto it and drained the pig sty into the nettle patch. Later still, the original wall blew over and so on. Each event, which may have taken a short or long time to accomplish, leaves a context, a deposit of material, on the site. This deposit and its relationship to earlier contexts may show up in section or in plan when viewed from above.
When there are hundreds of these relationships, a formal method of keeping track of them is required. An effective method is to prepare a Harris matrix. Their position in the matrix places the contexts in their sequence in time. Provided the archaeologist has maintained a record of the context in which each artefact was found, the tracing of the contexts by the matrix does equally well for the artefacts (objects).
Terminology in archaeology is not definitive but the following are typical uses of terms:
Cuts: A context is said to cut another context if the former's creation removed a part of the latter. For example a ditch cut, cuts all the contexts that made up the ground the ditch was dug into. Reciprocally, a context may be said to be cut by another.
Overlies: A context is said to overlie another when the overlying context is later in time and makes physical contact with the earlier context.
Above: A context is said to be above another if created later and, in general, vertically above the other context but not necessarily in physical contact.
Official source
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