Typology (archaeology)
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In
archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
, a typology is the result of the
classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood. Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes. It may also refer to: Business, organizat ...
of things according to their physical characteristics. The products of the classification, i.e. the classes, are also called types. Most archaeological typologies organize portable artifacts into types, but typologies of larger structures, including buildings, field monuments,
fortification A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
s or roads, are equally possible. A typology helps to manage a large mass of archaeological data. According to Doran and Hodson, "this superficially straightforward task has proved one of the most time consuming and contentious aspects of archaeological research".


Philosophical background

Typology is based on a view of the world familiar from
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
called
essentialism Essentialism is the view that objects have a set of attributes that are necessary to their identity. In early Western thought, Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In ''Categories'', Aristotle sim ...
. Essentialism is the idea that the world is divided into real, discontinuous and immutable "kinds". This idea is the basis for most typological constructions particularly of stone artefacts where essential forms are often thought of as "mental templates" or combinations of traits that are favoured by the maker. Variation in artifact form and attributes is seen as a consequence of the imperfect realization of the template and is usually attributed to differences in raw material properties or individuals' technical competences.


History

Although the principles were not clearly articulated, the application of basic typological techniques can occasionally be found in the work of early modern
antiquaries An antiquarian or antiquary () is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifacts, archaeological and historic sit ...
. As early as the 1530s, John Leland successfully identified
Roman brick Roman brick can refer either to a type of brick used in Ancient Roman architecture and spread by the Romans to the lands they conquered; or to a modern type inspired by the ancient prototypes. In both cases, it characteristically has longer and f ...
s (under the misleading designation "Briton brykes") at several different sites, distinguishing them from more modern bricks by size and shape. Antiquaries began to recognise in the late 16th century that medieval
monumental effigies An effigy is an often life-size sculptural representation of a specific person, or a prototypical figure. The term is mostly used for the makeshift dummies used for symbolic punishment in political protests and for the figures burned in certai ...
represented with their legs crossed were likely to be older than those with straight legs. In the late 17th century,
John Aubrey John Aubrey (12 March 1626 – 7 June 1697) was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the ''Brief Lives'', his collection of short biographical pieces. He was a pioneer archaeologist, ...
worked out crude evolutionary sequences based on typological distinctions for medieval architecture, handwriting, shield-shapes and costume, describing his technique as "comparative antiquitie". The outline of the development of medieval
Gothic architecture Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It e ...
was further refined in the 18th century, notably by
James Bentham James Bentham (10 March 1709? – 17 November 1794) was an English clergyman, antiquarian and historian of Ely Cathedral. Life Bentham was a son of the Rev. Samuel Bentham (''c''.1681–1733), registrar of Ely Cathedral and vicar of Witchford n ...
in his 1771 ''History and Antiquities of
Ely Cathedral Ely Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, is an Anglican cathedral in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. The cathedral has its origins in AD 672 when St Etheldreda built an abbey church. The presen ...
'', and culminated in the clear sequence of styles published by
Thomas Rickman Thomas Rickman (8 June 17764 January 1841) was an English architect and architectural antiquary who was a major figure in the Gothic Revival. He is particularly remembered for his ''Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture'' ...
in 1817.
Richard Gough Charles Richard Gough (born 5 April 1962) is a Scottish former professional footballer who played as a defender. Gough played in the successful Dundee United team of the early 1980s, winning the Scottish league title in 1982–83 and reachi ...
, in his ''Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain'' (1786–99), used comparative and typological methodology to analyse the development of
English church monuments A church monument is an architectural or sculptural memorial to a deceased person or persons, located within a Christian church. It can take various forms ranging from a simple commemorative plaque or mural tablet affixed to a wall, to a larg ...
. In the 19th and early 20th centuries archaeological typologies continued to be constructed using a combination of empirical observation and intuition. According to Eggers, most archaeologists give
Oscar Montelius Gustav Oscar August Montelius, known as Oscar Montelius (9September 18434November 1921) was a Swedish archaeologist who refined the concept of seriation, a relative chronological dating method. Biography Oscar Montelius refined the concept ...
the credit for the first serious application of the typological method, but in Eggers' view, his contemporary colleague from Stockholm, Hans Hildebrand made important contributions to the development of the methodology as well. Hildebrand published a fundamental paper on the development of
fibulae The fibula or calf bone is a leg bone on the lateral side of the tibia, to which it is connected above and below. It is the smaller of the two bones and, in proportion to its length, the most slender of all the long bones. Its upper extremity is ...
in the 1870s using the typological method, whereas Montelius at the same time went to international congresses and published smaller papers on this method. Augustus Pitt-Rivers also made significant contributions to the development of typology. In his lecture to the Society of Arts in 1891 Pitt-Rivers says, "When, as in the case of most prehistoric objects.., the date cannot be given, then recourse must be had to the sequence of type, and that is what I term 'Typology.' It is not an accepted term, and I am not aware that it has been applied before to the study of sequence of the types of the arts. But it appears to me that a name is wanted for this branch of investigation, which the term 'Typology' supplies." Another early example is the typology published in 1899 by
Flinders Petrie Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ( – ), commonly known as simply Flinders Petrie, was a British Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and the preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egypt ...
for the objects (mainly pottery) found in 900 prehistoric Egyptian graves. This typology formed the basis for his manual seriation of the graves. Later on William Albright became the leader of dating based on the typology of
Levantine pottery Pottery and ceramics have been produced in the Levant since prehistoric times. Historic background Neolithic Period The history of pottery in the region begins in the Late Neolithic period, sometimes known as Pottery Neolithic (PN) or occ ...
for excavations in the Middle East.


Quantitative methodologies

With the development of
statistical Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industria ...
techniques and numerical
taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
in the 1960s, mathematical methods (including
cluster analysis Cluster analysis or clustering is the task of grouping a set of objects in such a way that objects in the same group (called a cluster) are more similar (in some sense) to each other than to those in other groups (clusters). It is a main task of ...
,
principal components analysis Principal component analysis (PCA) is a popular technique for analyzing large datasets containing a high number of dimensions/features per observation, increasing the interpretability of data while preserving the maximum amount of information, and ...
, correspondence analysis and
factor analysis Factor analysis is a statistical method used to describe variability among observed, correlated variables in terms of a potentially lower number of unobserved variables called factors. For example, it is possible that variations in six observed ...
) have been used to build typologies. These techniques provide a qualitative way to articulate the degrees of consistency among particular attributes. Correlation coefficients created by these methods help archaeologists discern between meaningful and useless similarities between artefacts. During the 1990s
archaeologist Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...
s began to use
phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
methods borrowed from
cladistics Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...
.


Qualitative methodologies


Morphological/descriptive typology

One class of typology consists of a descriptive or morphological approach.Archaeology Wwordsmith morphological
/ref> It is based on the physical characteristics and the external features of an artifact. Some examples of morphological and descriptive typologies would be categorizing artifacts distinctively on their weight, height, color, material, or whichever class the individual decides upon.


Projectile point typology

An example of morphological/descriptive typology consists of when an archaeologist excavates a site and finds dozens upon dozens of Native American arrowheads. The archaeologist narrows down their classification by organizing the pieces into morphological/descriptive groups. So, the
projectile point In North American archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have ...
s could be sorted by weight, height, color, material, or however the archaeologists prefers. One of the first national typology bases available on the web exhibits how the arrowhead artifacts found are classified among the fifty states by region, state, or nationwide. In this particular example, the arrowheads are classified by their shape. The categories consist of: notched, stemmed, lanceolate, and other projectile points. Each category may also be narrowed down into subsequent ones.


Chronological typology

This type consists of sequential ordering of archaeological artifacts merely based on form. It involves collecting dates or relative dates that establishes the position in time the artifact lies in to reflect the civilization/events of a current region. A
chronological Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. ...
typology is made up of diagnostic artifacts, or relics that suggests a particular event/people occurred during a period of time


Functional typology

Artifacts organized into this kind of typology are sorted by the use they serve rather than the looks they have or the chronological sequence they possess. In some cases, the artifacts may not be removed because of the functional purpose they exhibit, and the restoration of the pieces can be more difficult than other types of objects.


Stylistic typology

This type of classification displays information about the artifact via the object's display. Stylistic typology is not to be confused with classification of certain styles, for that would just entail organizing artifacts based on how they look. This type of typology accounts for information told through the artifact.
Pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...
is an example of a stylistic typology because the artifacts provide information on artistic evolution.


Ceramics

For cultures that produced pottery, archaeologists invariably spend a great deal of time defining ceramic "types." Each type is a series of attributes which distinguishes one group of pottery (whether whole vessels or potsherds) from all other groups of pottery, such that each type was produced in a single time and place. Ideally, the attributes used to identify types are ones that are identifiable with the naked eye, and are found on small fragments of pottery, so that the sorting of potsherds into types is quick and straightforward. By sorting potsherds in terms of types, archaeologists can examine a series of potsherds (including those lying on a site surface) and quickly suggest when and where the pottery was made. By extension, they can estimate when a prehistoric site was used, whether there are any traded pieces, and so on. The names assigned to the ceramic types are arbitrary. In United States, the common practice is a two-part name, the first part being an arbitrary geographic reference and the second part providing a brief description of the pottery's most obvious design attributes. Thus, for example, the type "Flagstaff Black-on-white" was first defined using a collection from the vicinity of
Flagstaff, Arizona Flagstaff ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2019, the city's estimated population was 75,038. Flagstaff's combined metropolitan area has ...
, and its primary design attribute is the use of black paint on a white background. Non-archaeologists should be aware of the limitations of ceramic typology. All such typologies are abstractions, and fail to describe all of the variability in an artistic tradition. Professional disagreement over specifics is common. Changes in ceramic design did not happen overnight, and archaeological typologies tend to break continua of design evolution into arbitrary (but highly useful) units. Most archaeological dates are approximate.


Art

In the middle of the twentieth century, German photographers
Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...
raised typology to an art form by photographing countless similar architectural features including water towers, workers' houses and industrial landscapes.Bernd and Hilla Becher, ''Water Towers'', The MIT Press, 1988,


See also

*
Taxonomy (general) Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
*
Taxonomy (biology) In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...
*
Seriation (archaeology) In archaeology, seriation is a Relative dating#Archaeology, relative dating method in which assemblage (archaeology), assemblages or artifact (archaeology), artifacts from numerous sites in the same culture are placed in chronological order. Wher ...
*
Lithic analysis In archaeology, lithic analysis is the analysis of stone tools and other chipped stone artifacts using basic scientific techniques. At its most basic level, lithic analyses involve an analysis of the artifact’s morphology, the measurement of ...


References

* * *{{cite book , editor-last1=Whallon , editor-first1=R. , editor-first2=J.A. , editor-last2=Brown, year=1982 , title=Essays on Archaeological Typology , place=Evanston , publisher=Center for American Archaeology Press Dating methodologies in archaeology Methods in archaeology Archaeological theory Museology