Seriaton in Archaeology

"Seriation" is a method in relative dating in which artifacts of numerous sites, in the same culture, are placed in chronological order. In the words of archeologist Gehrard, "whoever sees one monument has really seen none; whoever has seen a thousand has only seen one." (cited in Molino 1974, p.87)

Where absolute dating methods, such as carbon dating, cannot be applied, archaeologists have to use relative dating methods to date archaeological finds and features. There are two assumptions that seriation is based from: 1) The change of culture is gradual, moving from the simple to the more complex, and 2) Any similarites between artifacts can be a measurment of their cultural relationship. Seriation is a standard method of dating in North American archaeology. It can be used to date pottery fragments, stone tools, and other artifacts. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Radiocarbon dating is the use of the naturally occurring isotope of carbon-14 in radiometric dating to determine the age of organic materials, up to ca. ...

William Flinders Petrie excavated at Diospolis Parva in Egypt in the late nineteenth century. He found that the graves he was uncovering contained no evidence of their dates and their discrete nature meant that a sequence could not be constructed through their stratigraphy. Petrie listed the contents of each grave on pieces of paper and swapped the papers around until he arrived at a sequence he was satisfied with (Petrie 1899). He reasoned that the most accurate sequence would be the one where concentrations of certain design styles had the shortest duration across the sequence of papers. Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (3 June 1853 - 28 July 1942) was a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology. ... Stratigraphy, a branch of geology, is basically the study of rock layers and layering (stratification). ...

Later work using multivariate statistics, such as correspondence analysis (Kendall 1971), has supported the effectiveness of Petrie's seriation method for producing correct sequences.

Assuming that design styles follow a bell curve of popularity: starting slowly, growing to a peak and then dying away as another style becomes popular provides the basis for frequency seriation. It also assumes that design popularity will be broadly similar from site to site within the same culture. Following these rules, an assemblage of objects can be placed into sequence so that sites with the most similar proportions of certain styles are always together. In archaeology, culture refers to either of two separate but allied concepts: An archaeological culture is a pattern of similar artefacts and features found within a specific area over a limited period of time. ... An assemblage is an archaeological term meaning a group of different artefacts found in association with one another, that is, in the same context. ...

References

• Fagan, B. (2005). "Ancient North America". Thames & Hudson Ltd, London
• Montelius, O. (1903). Die typologische Methode. Stockholm: Selbstverlag
• Petrie, F. W. M. (1899). Sequences in prehistoric remains. Journal of the Anthropological Institute 29:295-301
• Kendall, D.G. (1971). "Seriation from abundance matrices," in Mathematics in the Archaeological and Historical Sciences. Edited by F. R. Hodson, D. G. Kendall, and P. Tautu, pp. 215-252. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0852242131.

Seriation in Semiotics

The term seriation [mise en série] was proposed for use in semiotics by Jean Molino and derived from classical philology. Seriation "invokes the idea that any investigator, in order to assign some plausible meaning to a given phenomena, must interpret it within a series of comparable phenomena. One cannot interpret what philology calls a hapax; that is, an isolated phenomenon. Art historian Erwin Panofsky has explained the situation in very clear terms: Semiotics - also known as semiology - is the study of signs, both individually and grouped in sign systems, and includes the study of how meaning is transmitted and understood. ... Jean Molino is professeur ordinaire at the University of Lausanne and a semiologist. ... Philology is the study of ancient texts and languages. ...

• 'Whether we deal with historical or natural phenomena, the individual observation of phenomena assumes the character of a 'fact' only when it can be related to other, analogous observations in such a way that the whole series 'makes sense.' This 'sense' is, therefore, fully capable of being applied, as a control, to the interpretation of a new individual observation within the same range of phenomena. If, however, this new individual observation definitely refuses to be interpreted according to the 'sense' of the series, and if an error proves to be impossible, the 'sense' of the series will have to be reformulated to include the new individual observation' (1955, p.35)" (1990, p.230-231).

A seriation is determined by the plot. // Plot in literature, theater, movies According to Aristotles Poetics, a plot in literature is the arrangement of incidents that (ideally) each follow plausibly from the other. ...

Source

• Nattiez, Jean-Jacques (1990). Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music (Musicologie générale et sémiologue, 1987). Translated by Carolyn Abbate (1990). ISBN 0691027145.
  • Molino, Jean (1974).
  • Panofksy, Erwin (1955).