Σύγκριση μεθόδων

	Experimental Archaeology	Formation Process Analysis
Πεδίο	Αρχαιολογία	Αρχαιολογία
Οικογένεια	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Έτος προέλευσης	1979	1987
Δημιουργός	Developed by many; systematized in the later 20th century (e.g. Coles, Schiffer, use-wear analysts)	Michael B. Schiffer (behavioral archaeology)
Τύπος	Controlled experimental and actualistic research pipeline	Inferential framework and analysis pipeline for record formation
Θεμελιώδης πηγή	Renfrew, C., & Bahn, P. (2016). Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice (7th ed.). Thames & Hudson. ISBN: 9780500292105	Schiffer, M. B. (1987). Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN: 9780826309631
Εναλλακτικές ονομασίες	Replicative Experimentation, Actualistic Studies, Controlled Archaeological Experiment, Replication Studies	Site Formation Analysis, C-transforms and N-transforms, Behavioral Archaeology Formation Theory, Archaeological Record Formation
Συναφείς	2	2
Σύνοψη	Experimental archaeology is the controlled replication of past materials, technologies, and behaviors in order to test hypotheses about how the archaeological record was produced. By making stone tools, firing pottery, building and burning structures, butchering with replica implements, or letting bone and refuse decay under monitored conditions, the experimenter generates traces — debitage, use-wear, residues, decay rates — that can be compared with those found archaeologically. The logic is uniformitarian: if a known process reliably produces a particular trace today, the same trace in the record is evidence of that process in the past. Systematized in the later twentieth century by scholars such as John Coles and integrated with behavioral archaeology and use-wear analysis, experimental archaeology is a cornerstone of middle-range research, building the bridging arguments that connect static finds to dynamic behavior.	Formation process analysis is the framework for identifying the cultural and natural processes that transform materials from their living, systemic context into the archaeological record we excavate. Developed by Michael Schiffer within behavioral archaeology and codified in his 1987 Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record, it insists that the archaeological record is not a fossilized snapshot of past life but the cumulative product of how things were discarded, lost, reused, and disturbed (cultural or C-transforms) and how they then decayed, moved, and mixed in the ground (natural or N-transforms). Because every deposit has been filtered and rearranged by these processes, sound inference about past behavior requires first reconstructing the formation history of the record and correcting for it. Formation process analysis is therefore foundational to interpretation, linking excavation, geoarchaeology, and taphonomy.