Comparar métodos

	Munsell Soil Color	Harris Matrix
Área	Arqueologia	Arqueologia
Família	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Ano de origem	1905	1973
Autor original	Albert H. Munsell (color system); standardized for soils by the USDA and soil-science community	Edward C. Harris (with the Winchester excavation team)
Tipo	Standardized perceptual color description pipeline	Stratigraphic recording and sequence-diagramming pipeline
Fonte seminal	Goldberg, P., & Macphail, R. I. (2006). Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN: 9780632060443	Harris, E. C. (1989). Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy (2nd ed.). Academic Press. ISBN: 9780123266514
Outros nomes	Munsell Color Notation, Munsell Soil Color Charts, Soil Color Description, HVC Color Recording	Stratigraphic Sequence Diagram, Harris-Winchester Matrix, Single-Context Recording, Context Sequence Diagram
Relacionados	2	2
Resumo	Munsell soil color recording is the standard method for describing the color of soils, sediments, and artifacts in archaeology and geoarchaeology using Albert Munsell's perceptually ordered color system. Rather than relying on subjective names like 'brown' or 'tan,' the analyst matches a sample to printed color chips and records a three-part notation — hue, value, and chroma — that fixes the color as a point in a standardized three-dimensional space. This makes color a reproducible, communicable observation that different excavators, sites, and decades can compare directly. Color in turn carries information about organic content, oxidation and reduction, burning, and parent material, so disciplined Munsell recording is a routine first step in distinguishing deposits, defining horizons, and reading site formation.	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.