Systematics: Classification and Grouping

Abstract

This chapter discusses the conceptual tools that archaeologists use to construct nominal and ordinal scales through classification and to group artifacts and other things on the basis of their similarities and differences. There is a fundamental difference between classification, which is abstract and definitive, and grouping, which depends on the characteristics of a particular sample or set of observations that is concrete and is thus descriptive. After reviewing various methods of classification and grouping, the chapter concludes with discussions of quality in systematics and the debate as to whether typologies have “natural” meaning or are just the product of researchers’ priorities and interests.