Complicated Relations and Blind Dating: Formal Analysis of Relative Chronological Structures

Abstract

Relative chronology building is an essential part of chronology construction in archaeology. Whilst Chapters 1, 2, 3, 5 and 11 use relative chronological information in statistical analyses of dates assuming that it is reliable, this chapter considers relative dating evidence and the uncertainty associated with it in more detail. At most archaeological sites a formal treatment of the relative chronological evidence is first and foremost associated with stratigraphy which is represented using the Harris matrix, but the relative chronological evidence uncovered at excavations includes a much broader range of observations. These observations are often characterized by uncertainty or ambiguity as regards their temporal implications The first part of this chapter considers different approaches in the use of relative chronology at excavations and, subsequently, a proposal is outlined for a new procedure. The procedure involves four elements: a system of description enabling the formal representation of the information, an outline of a database structure capable of handling the complexity and the dynamic properties of the data, a method of analysis, and finally some considerations on the interpretative use of the analytical results.