Compare methods

	Formation Process Analysis	Soil Micromorphology	Taphonomic Analysis
Field	Archaeology	Archaeology	Archaeology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1987	1938	1994
Originator	Michael B. Schiffer (behavioral archaeology)	Walter L. Kubiëna (soil micromorphology); applied to archaeology by Goldberg, Macphail, Courty and others	Ivan Efremov (taphonomy concept); R. Lee Lyman (archaeological synthesis)
Type	Inferential framework and analysis pipeline for record formation	Microscopic thin-section analysis pipeline for site formation	Diagnostic pipeline for reconstructing the formation history of a bone assemblage
Seminal source	Schiffer, M. B. (1987). Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN: 9780826309631	Goldberg, P., & Macphail, R. I. (2006). Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN: 9780632060443	Lyman, R. L. (1994). Vertebrate Taphonomy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521458405
Aliases	Site Formation Analysis, C-transforms and N-transforms, Behavioral Archaeology Formation Theory, Archaeological Record Formation	Archaeological Micromorphology, Thin-Section Micromorphology, Sediment Thin-Section Analysis, Micromorphological Analysis	Bone Taphonomy, Faunal Taphonomy, Bone Surface Modification Analysis, Assemblage Formation Analysis
Related	2	2	2
Summary	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.	Soil micromorphology is the microscopic study of undisturbed soils and sediments in thin section to reconstruct how archaeological deposits formed and were altered. An oriented block is cut from a deposit without disturbing its internal structure, hardened with resin, and ground into a slice about thirty micrometers thick that can be examined under a petrographic microscope. At that scale the analyst can read features invisible in the field — the arrangement of mineral grains, microscopic charcoal and bone, plastered surfaces, dung, trampling fabrics, and the pedofeatures left by water, roots, and burrowing organisms. Developed for soil science by Walter Kubiëna and adapted for archaeology by geoarchaeologists such as Goldberg, Macphail, and Courty, micromorphology is the highest-resolution tool for interpreting site formation, occupation surfaces, and anthropogenic deposits in their original spatial context.	Taphonomic analysis is the study of everything that happens to animal remains between the death of an organism and the moment an archaeologist records its bones, and of how those processes shaped the assemblage we recover. Coined by the paleontologist Ivan Efremov as the 'laws of burial,' taphonomy became a rigorous archaeological method through R. Lee Lyman's Vertebrate Taphonomy, which systematized the reading of bone surfaces, weathering, breakage, and skeletal-part survival. The goal is twofold: to identify which agents — humans, carnivores, water, weathering — accumulated and modified the bones, and to measure how much of the original assemblage was destroyed by density-mediated attrition. Because every quantitative faunal measure depends on these formation processes, taphonomic analysis is the indispensable prelude to interpreting subsistence and behavior from animal bone.