Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stratification and correlation are universally central to constructing site-specific and regional chronologies, yet archaeological practices vary from one part of the world to another. This session brings together scholars working in the Old and New Worlds to discuss the historical development, current state, and future goal of archaeological practice in the excavation, recording, and analysis of stratification at sites, as well as the correlation of strata within and between sites. Session topics include sequence diagrams, including the Harris Matrix; space-time modeling of stratigraphic data; excavation strategies, including single-context excavation; chronological modeling for age estimation, including hierarchical Bayesian models; seriation in a variety of archaeological settings; regional practices of correlation; and best practices for replicable and collaborative analyses, including sustainable strategies for large and complex stratigraphic and chronometric data.

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  • Documents (14)

Documents
  • An Application of Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling to Upper Paleolithic Archaeological Cultures in France between 32 and 21 cal ka BP (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Banks. Philippe Lanos.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Investigations of chronology play a key role in the majority of archaeological research endeavors and are particularly pertinent to examinations of culture-environment relationships, especially during periods marked by pronounced climatic variability. Rigorous evaluations of data and robust methods are necessary to reconstruct...

  • Automation of Bayesian Chronology Construction Using a Graph Theoretic Approach (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Bryony Moody. Caitlin Buck. Tom Dye. Keith May. Gianna Ayala.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses developing prototype software for handling the relative and absolute dating evidence obtained during single context excavations as carried out in many European countries such as the UK. We seek to use mathematical graph theory to manage both stratigraphic and chronological information during Bayesian...

  • Chronological Perspectives on the Spread of Agriculture in Southeastern Europe (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Dusan Boric. Paul Duffy.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Neolithic studies in Europe have recently seen the impact of two very different sets of approaches to building chronological frameworks using radiocarbon dating. On the one hand, archaeologists have used radiocarbon dates as proxies for levels of human activity on past landscapes by employing summed probability distributions of...

  • Events, Narrative, and Data: Why New Chronologies, Big Data, and New Materiality Should Change How We Write Archaeology (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Seren Griffiths. Ben Edwards. Tom Higham. Julian Thomas.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeology, at its broadest, constitutes a specific set of practices utilizing material culture to create meaningful narratives. Central to this is our discipline’s relationships with time. This paper will discuss the "time dimensions" and ways archaeological narratives are structured. We suggest that archaeologists need to...

  • From Dune Stratigraphy to a Model-Based Cultural Sequence for the Marquesas Islands of East Polynesia (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Barry Rolett.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Marquesas Islands comprise part of East Polynesia, a culture area that also includes Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Tahiti. Calcareous sand dunes are rare in the Marquesas but play an outsized role in Polynesian archaeology. Dune sites yield remarkably rich evidence of human settlement and the preservation of organic remains is...

  • A New Bayesian Approach for Estimating Chronological Events and Phases with ChronoModel (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippe Lanos. Philippe Dufresne.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many issues in archaeology concern the issue of phasing—the beginning, end, and duration of a given period. We define a “Phase” as a group of Events (Event dates) that share common features. Currently used Phase models implemented in many software packages employ statistical models that concentrate posterior Event dates....

  • Poor Preservation in Complex Urban Settings: Chronology-Building in the Maya Area (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Takeshi Inomata.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists working in the Maya area face multiple challenges as they develop chronological studies. First, many sites are complex urban centers with diverse types of structures and areas. Second, these sites commonly have long occupation, involving migrations, destructions of buildings, and recycling of construction...

  • Reasoning between the Lines: The Chronology of Phyletic Seriation (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Dye. Caitlin Buck. Robert DiNapoli.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The joint posteriors of Bayesian calibration can be analyzed with Allen's interval algebra to guide phyletic seriation, which comprehends the three modes of artifact change recognized by evolutionary archaeologists, including anagenesis, cladogenesis, and reticulation. Using the example of beads recovered from stratigraphically...

  • Refining the Chronology of Earthwork Construction in the Lower Mississippi Valley Archaic Period (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert DiNapoli. Carl P. Lipo. Timothy De Smet. Diana Greenlee.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The culture history of southeastern North America is characterized by several episodes of monumental mound building, particularly during the Woodland and Mississippian periods. Some of the earliest manifestations of mound construction occur in the Middle and Late Archaic periods of the Lower Mississippi River Valley. The Late...

  • Space-Time in the Matrix and the Uses of Allen Temporal Operators for Stratigraphic Analysis (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith May.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Records of archaeological stratigraphic data and the relationships between separately identified stratigraphic units are fundamental to understanding the overall cohesiveness of an archaeological excavation during fieldwork, analysis, publication, and in any resulting archive. Having divided the archaeology into various units...

  • Stratigraphy and Chronology at Las Capas, an Early Agricultural Period Site in the Tucson Basin (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Vint.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper discusses the stratigraphic chronology for the Las Capas site in the Tucson Basin, southern Arizona. Las Capas was inhabited by early farmers during the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period (EAP), which dates from about 2100 cal BC to cal AD 50. Maize and canal irrigation were introduced during this interval....

  • Temporal Reasoning and Visualization across Periodized Archaeological Datasets: The Potential of the PeriodO Gazetteer (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Rabinowitz.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores the potential of the PeriodO period gazetteer to facilitate temporal reasoning and visualization in archaeological datasets, both within and between stratigraphic databases that refer to PeriodO definitions for their period terms, and within and between datasets using only natural-language labels. The...

  • The Timing of the Angel Polity: A Regional History from Site-Scale Chronology (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Krus. Edward Herrmann. Christina Friberg. Dru McGill. Jeremy Wilson.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Angel polity, located within the northeast Mississippian (AD 1000–1500) frontier, consisted of a network of hamlets and villages along the Ohio River, encompassing ∼800 km2 in southwestern Indiana. In this paper, we present 22 new radiocarbon measurements from archaeological samples that provide dates for occupations,...

  • Wiggle-Match Dating at the Montezuma Castle Cliff Dwelling (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicholas Kessler. Greg Hodgins. Matthew Guebard. Lucas Hoedl.

    This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies I: Stratification and Correlation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most radiocarbon measurements informing Bayesian models of cultural sequences are obtained from short-lived organisms such as annual plants and animal bone. Short-lived organic material from plateaus in atmospheric 14C production have a calibrated error that corresponds to the duration of the plateau. This fact hinders Bayesian...