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	Harris Matrix	Soil Micromorphology
Ämnesområde	Arkeologi	Arkeologi
Familj	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Ursprungsår	1973	1938
Upphovsperson	Edward C. Harris (with the Winchester excavation team)	Walter L. Kubiëna (soil micromorphology); applied to archaeology by Goldberg, Macphail, Courty and others
Typ	Stratigraphic recording and sequence-diagramming pipeline	Microscopic thin-section analysis pipeline for site formation
Ursprungskälla	Harris, E. C. (1989). Principles of Archaeological Stratigraphy (2nd ed.). Academic Press. ISBN: 9780123266514	Goldberg, P., & Macphail, R. I. (2006). Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN: 9780632060443
Alias	Stratigraphic Sequence Diagram, Harris-Winchester Matrix, Single-Context Recording, Context Sequence Diagram	Archaeological Micromorphology, Thin-Section Micromorphology, Sediment Thin-Section Analysis, Micromorphological Analysis
Närliggande	2	2
Sammanfattning	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.	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.