Archaeological Stratigraphy

Stratigraphy is often just as important to archaeologists as it is to geologists, as it provides a highly reliable basis for ordering events in time (ordinal scale). In this video, I talk about some general stratigraphic principles, borrowed from geology, as well as some more specific to archaeology, including ones that the Bermudan archaeologist, Edward Harris, has advocated. I then demonstrate how Harris matrices work, with emphasis on multilineal sequences, introduce the topic of software that generates Harris matrices, and end with a brief introduction to the Unitary Association Method, which allows us to correlate stratigraphic sequences in different sites or different parts of the same site.

Some other videos on this topic that you might find useful:

   • Principles of Stratigraphy and Cross-Cutti...  
   • Stratigraphy  
   • Relative Dating of Rock Layers  

For the Unitary Association Method, here's a link to Jean Guex's book:
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/biochro...

And here's a link to the PAST software's module on UAM: https://palaeo-electronica.org/2001_1...

And an interesting project on the usefulness of digital stratigraphic data:
https://stratigraphic.github.io/matri...

My book, The Archaeologist's Laboratory:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.100...

0:00 Introduction
0:01 THE ARCHAEOLOGIST'S LABORATORY STRATIGRAPHY
1:22 Basic Principles
2:28 Early Stratigraphy
4:05 Stratigraphic "Events"
6:12 Stratigraphic Logic
8:05 Stratigraphic Sections
9:20 Harris Matrices
14:51 Dating Deposits
16:55 Single-Context Plans
18:00 Horizontal Stratigraphy
19:38 Stratigraphy Software
20:35 Unitary Association Method
24:50 Residual Maximal Horizons

#archaeology #thearchaeologistslaboratory #stratigraphy #chronology #geoarchaeology