Σύγκριση μεθόδων

	Ceramic Typology	Contextual Seriation
Πεδίο	Αρχαιολογία	Αρχαιολογία
Οικογένεια	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Έτος προέλευσης	1987	1899
Δημιουργός	Developed across 20th-century archaeology; synthesized by Prudence M. Rice	W. M. F. Petrie (sequence dating); formalized as occurrence seriation by mid-20th-century quantitative archaeologists
Τύπος	Attribute-based classification of pottery for chronology and cultural attribution	Relative-chronology ordering of units by presence-absence of types
Θεμελιώδης πηγή	Rice, P. M. (1987). Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226711188	Lyman, R. L., & O'Brien, M. J. (2006). Measuring Time with Artifacts: A History of Methods in American Archaeology. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN: 9780803280526
Εναλλακτικές ονομασίες	Pottery Typology, Ceramic Classification, Ware and Type Classification, Type-Variety Analysis	Occurrence Seriation, Sequence Dating, Incidence Seriation
Συναφείς	2	3
Σύνοψη	Ceramic typology is the systematic classification of pottery into named groups — wares, types, and varieties — on the basis of shared attributes of form, fabric, surface treatment, decoration, and manufacturing technology. Because pottery is durable, ubiquitous, and changed rapidly in style, it is the archaeologist's most powerful tool for ordering sites and layers in time and for linking material to cultural traditions. As Prudence Rice's standard sourcebook sets out, a typology is built by recording consistent attributes, partitioning the assemblage into defined types, and arranging those types in a nested hierarchy that can then be quantified and compared across contexts. The resulting type frequencies become the raw material for relative dating, seriation, and the interpretation of trade, identity, and chronology.	Contextual seriation, also called occurrence or sequence seriation, is a relative-dating method that orders discrete archaeological units — typically graves or closed deposits — using only the presence or absence of artifact types within them. Its logic is the lifespan assumption: each type is introduced, used continuously for some span, and then disappears, so the contexts in which a type occurs should form an unbroken stretch of the sequence. By permuting the rows and columns of a presence-absence matrix until every type's occurrences cluster into a single contiguous block, the analyst recovers a one-dimensional ordering interpreted as time. The technique originates with W. M. F. Petrie's sequence dating of Egyptian predynastic graves and remains a standard tool for chronology where only incidence data, not abundances, are available.