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	Harris Matrix	Radiocarbon Calibration
分野	考古学	考古学
系統	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
提唱年	1973	2020
提唱者	Edward C. Harris (with the Winchester excavation team)	Hans Suess (first curves); IntCal Working Group (P. J. Reimer et al.)
種類	Stratigraphic recording and sequence-diagramming pipeline	Probabilistic conversion of radiocarbon ages to calendar ages
原典	Harris, E. C. (1989). Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy (2nd ed.). Academic Press. ISBN: 9780123266514	Reimer, P. J., et al. (2020). The IntCal20 Northern Hemisphere Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curve (0-55 cal kBP). Radiocarbon, 62(4), 725-757.
別名	Stratigraphic Sequence Diagram, Harris-Winchester Matrix, Single-Context Recording, Context Sequence Diagram	14C Calibration, IntCal Calibration, Calendar Calibration of Radiocarbon Dates
関連	2	3
概要	The Harris matrix is a method for recording and diagramming the stratigraphic sequence of an archaeological site as a partial-order diagram of individually defined contexts. Devised by Edward C. Harris at the Winchester excavations in 1973 and codified in his Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy, it treats every deposit, cut, and interface as a separate stratigraphic unit and reduces the tangle of physical relationships among them to a minimal directed acyclic graph that expresses only relative temporal order. By distinguishing physical superposition from temporal sequence and stripping away redundant relationships through transitive reduction, the matrix turns the three-dimensional complexity of a dig into a single, auditable diagram. It is the structural backbone of single-context recording and the standard interface between excavation and chronological modeling.	Radiocarbon calibration converts a laboratory radiocarbon measurement into a probability distribution over actual calendar years. It is necessary because the assumptions behind a raw radiocarbon age are not exactly true: the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has varied over time, so a measured radiocarbon age does not equal a calendar age. Calibration corrects for this by comparing the measurement against an internationally agreed curve — currently IntCal20 — that records the relationship between radiocarbon age and calendar age, reconstructed from precisely dated tree rings, corals, speleothems, and other archives. Because the curve wiggles, calibration typically yields an irregular, sometimes multi-peaked range of calendar years rather than a single date, and that range is the proper expression of a radiocarbon result.