Seriation

Abstract

This chapter reviews methods and theory involving seriation—the inference of chronological order among artifacts or assemblages of artifacts in the absence of independent evidence from stratigraphy or chronometric dating. Beginning with incidence seriation, which is based on the presence or absence of artifact types, it goes on to frequency seriation, which takes the relative abundances of artifact types into account. Incidence seriation is based on the assumption that artifact types have “existence intervals” that begin, end some time later, and never begin again. Frequency seriation has the more complex assumption that artifact types appear, grow in abundance or “popularity,” and then decline in frequency until they disappear. The chapter reviews a number of methods for implementing seriation, with examples, including a Bayesian approach that takes into account that there may be more than one solution to ordering assemblages, some of which are more probable than others. There is also brief reference to seriation of coins by die linkages and the protection of quality in seriation.