Abstract
A critical aspect of analysing an archaeological site is identifying the network of relationships between the things we find and the locations where we find them. These associations are typically determined by a combination of quantitative analyses and the professional knowledge and intuition of the archaeologist, but where exactly is the boundary between what is truly empirical field data and what is inferred through our prior knowledge and field methods? How can we best support those inferences? This paper is a critical evaluation of that boundary to firmly ground, as much as possible, a quantitative analysis on only that which we can directly observe – the thing and its location – and derive associations from that basis alone. To do so, the approach described here relies on a combination of set and graph theories rather than statistical or spatial methods. This revised ontology allows a formalization, in combinatorial terms, for describing an underlying structure to contexts and assemblages that suggests a clear association between archaeological site analysis and a well-studied class of set and graph covering problems. This, in turn, points towards potential algorithmic solutions for a more holistic parsing of the total relationships between sites, contexts, assemblages, proveniences, and artefacts.
Highlights
A fundamental aspect of archaeological work is identifying patterns within a site of interest
The uncertainty introduced by moving incrementally further from the empirical basis of our data underscores the most difficult and pertinent question for interpreting the archaeological record – how can we show that our inferences, inasmuch as they are based on that empirical record, are correct? In other words, are we reasonably certain that we’ve correctly identified which samples belong to which contexts? Can we demonstrate that our assemblages are, related? How can we provide stronger evidence to support whether our samples are truly associated? Is there a way to penetrate the intervening layers of noise, untangle the cumulative transformations of postdepositional processes, and get a glimpse of the site as it was originally?
The goal is to identify which empirical attributes of the archaeological record indicate the underlying structure of its internal associations, and to isolate those attributes that are distinct from the interpretive implications of those observations. This essentially breaks down into five distinct but interrelated entities: 1) a site, 2) the contexts that represent final-stage site formation processes, 3) the excavated components that constitute the sampling from the site, 4) the assemblage(s) of archaeological material collected from that site, and 5) the artefacts found within the excavated samples that constitute the elements of the assemblage
Summary
Graphs, and Things We Can See: A Formal Combinatorial Ontology for Empirical Intra-Site Analysis. A critical aspect of analysing an archaeological site is identifying the network of relationships between the things we find and the locations where we find them These associations are typically determined by a combination of quantitative analyses and the professional knowledge and intuition of the archaeologist, but where exactly is the boundary between what is truly empirical field data and what is inferred through our prior knowledge and field methods? The approach described here relies on a combination of set and graph theories rather than statistical or spatial methods This revised ontology allows a formalization, in combinatorial terms, for describing an underlying structure to contexts and assemblages that suggests a clear association between archaeological site analysis and a well-studied class of set and graph covering problems.
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