Classification And Typology Research Paper

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Classification is the initial means through which we impose a degree of order on the enormously diverse remains of the human past. As such, it is probably the single most basic analytical procedure employed by the archaeologist. Excavation yields an enormous diversity of materials that are not self-labeling; they must be endowed with identity and meaning by the excavator or the analyst. This is done in the first instance through classification.

1. Classification And Typology

Archaeologists often use the terms classification and typology interchangeably, but in this research paper a distinction will be made. A classification is any set of formal categories into which a particular field of data is partitioned, while a typology is a particular type of rigorous classification, in which a field of data is divided up into categories that are all defined according to the same set of criteria, and that are mutually exclusive. As will be shown later, most archaeological classifications of artifacts are typologies, while most classifications of cultures are not.

1.1 Archaeological Classification And Culture

The basic organizing concept for most prehistorians, as for most other anthropologists, is the concept of culture, but it is somewhat differently defined in the two cases. The cultural anthropologist conceives of the world as divided into a set of distinct peoples— tribes, nations, or ethnic groups—each of which has its own unique set of behavior patterns and beliefs, very often including its own language, which together constitute a culture. The prehistorian thinks of the ancient world as similarly partitioned, but the various long-vanished peoples can now be recognized only by the distinct kinds of artifact types they left behind. In place of forgotten languages and behavior patterns, every artifact type is treated as tantamount to a deliberate cultural expression—a culture trait. An archaeologically defined ‘culture’ is then a unique combination of artifact, house, and burial types, which are assumed, because of their cultural commonality, to be the remains left by a distinct, self-recognizing people. Those commonalities are recognized above all through processes of classification.

1.2 Kinds Of Archaeological Classification

Obviously, any of the different kinds of material remains that archaeologists find can be classified, and there are in fact many different kinds of archaeological classifications and typologies. In the broadest sense, all of them fall into two categories, which may be called analytic and synthetic. Analytic classifications are classifications of one particular kind of object, in which all of the regularly recurring variants are recognized, defined, and named. The things most often classified are those that show a high degree of culturally patterned variability, including various kinds of stone tools and weapons; pottery; beads and other ornaments; house types; and grave types. Classifications of these things are usually typologies; that is, they partition the entire field of variability into a comprehensive set of mutually exclusive categories, because they are very commonly used for sorting and counting the objects found.

Artifact typologies can be made in a wide variety of ways, depending on what criteria of identity are considered important. This in turn will depend on the purpose for which the classification is made. Among the many kinds of artifact classifications it is possible to recognize purely morphological typologies, based on the overall form of objects; stylistic typologies, which specially emphasize stylistic features; functional classifications, in which objects are classified according to their presumed use; ‘emic’ classifications, in which objects are classified according to criteria believed to have been important to the makers; and distributional typologies, in which objects are classified according to their distribution in time and space.

In addition to the analytic classifications of particular object types, there are also synthetic classifications, in which recurring combinations of different artifact, house, and grave types are taken together to define ‘cultures.’ These classifications are quite different from artifact classifications, in that they are not typologies. That is, they are not used to divide up material into discrete, mutually exclusive units. The boundaries between units are not always sharp, and the criteria of identity are not always uniform. Some ‘cultures’ have been identified primarily on the basis of pottery types, others by stone tool types, and still others by house types. Archaeological ‘cultures’ are above all historical constructs; they are the prehistorian’s basic way of mapping the prehistoric world, by dividing it into units of study which can be thought of as equivalent to peoples.

Culture classifications generally have a chronological as well as a spatial dimension. That is, the classification includes cultures that existed in different areas, but also that existed in different periods of time in the same area. Very often a generalized regional culture, like Anasazi, is divided into a sequence of developmental stages, which in the case of Anasazi are designated as Pueblo I, II, III, IV, and V. Like biological classifications, then, culture classifications often have a genetic component, when later cultures are recognized as ‘descended from’ earlier ones.

2. Historical Background

Although the excavation of ancient sites, for antiquarian purposes, had its beginnings in the Renaissance, the scientific investigation of prehistory began only in the nineteenth century, above all in Scandinavia. It was Danish archaeologists who developed the first ‘culture classification’—the division of all European prehistory into Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages—and they also developed the specific artifact typologies on which the ‘Three-Age System’ was based. In the later nineteenth century, especially in France, prehistorians carried the same basic approach much further, dividing up the Stone Age into a whole succession of phases, or cultures, defined by distinctive tool types. In this work, artifact classification was conceived above all as an aid to dating; that is, to the placing of prehistoric remains in their proper chronological order.

In the Americas there was a general belief that prehistoric Indian remains were not more than two or three millennia old, and consequently there was not much interest in sorting out their chronology. American prehistorians were much more struck by the spatial than by the chronological variability of the indigenous cultures, as they began to recognize the very wide diversity of pottery types, tool types, and house types that had been used in different parts of the continent. Beginning in the early twentieth century, they set about defining and naming a whole panoply of localized cultures and subcultures on the basis of these variable traits. As their work intensified and their methods improved, however, they also became aware of temporal differences among the remains they studied, again based on typological features. In 1927 A. V. Kidder and his associates proposed the ‘Pecos Chronology,’ in which prehistoric and historic Southwestern remains were assigned to seven developmental phases, designated as Basket Maker II and III, and Pueblo I–V, each with its defining typological characteristics. Within a decade, similar chronological schemes had been devised in many other parts of North and Middle America.

Once they were drawn into the classificatory enterprise, prehistorians both in the Old and the New Worlds devoted much of their energies to the development of what have been called ‘time–space grids,’ which were to become the basic map of prehistory. The prehistoric world was divided into a set of cultures, and most cultures were further divided into developmental phases, strictly on typological grounds. To a very large extent, the schemes that were developed remain in use down to the present day.

By the middle of the twentieth century the ‘time– space’ grids were mostly in place, at least over North America and Europe, and archaeologists began making classifications for new purposes. As a result at that time of a strong influence from functionalist anthropology, it was argued that classifications should emphasize what the objects were used for, or what they meant to the makers and users, rather than simply what was useful to the archaeologist for purposes of identity and dating. The functionalist paradigm lasted for about a generation, and then was replaced by what may be called the nomothetic paradigm. It was argued, in the 1960s and 1970s, that scientific archaeology should devote itself not to historical issues of cultural development but to the testing of general, causal hypothesis about culture processes, and classifications should be developed that would aid in that process. In reality very few of them ever were; the nomothetic paradigm, as applied to classification, was much more a lofty ideal than a practical reality.

A subsequent revolution, or at least an anticipated revolution, came about with the introduction of computers. The practical problem in making typologies was always that of limiting the attributes to be considered to a finite number, without at the same time introducing the bias of human judgment. It was believed, however, that if all the possible attributes of a group of objects were fed into a computer, the machine itself could determine, on a purely quantitative basis, which were and were not important. Thus was born the concept of ‘numerical taxonomy,’ in which computers would designate types, and differentiate them from other types, purely on the basis of the numbers of shared traits, regardless of what the traits were. The goal was ‘automatic classification,’ in which human judgment would be altogether eliminated.

After two decades of experimentation, however, this goal was found to be illusory. Unless there was some preselection of attributes to be coded, based on human judgmental decisions, the classifications produced by computers were far too cumbersome and particularized to have any practical utility. Every partitioning scheme that was tried produced hundreds of types. Moreover, the ‘types’ they produced could not be shown to have meaning with reference to any specific purpose. As a result, most of the typologies that are in use today are still those that were developed in the earlier part of the century, in the heyday of ‘time–space partitioning.’

3. Artifact Classifications And Types

Basic to all artifact classifications is the concept of ‘type.’ Whatever kind of material is being classified— pottery or stone tools, for example—it is partitioned into a set of mutually exclusive categories that are usually called types. The type concept is actually a good deal more complex than it at first appears, and it has been the subject of various controversies that will be considered later. A type consists in the first instance of a body of objects having common features that set them apart from other objects. However, the type concept also includes our ideas about the things and what they have in common, and the words and sometimes the pictures that we use to describe them. Every type, in short, has members (actual objects), a description, a definition, and a name.

It is important to notice that these things may be modified independently of one another; we may refine our notions about what defines a particular type, based on the finding of additional material, but we may also find better ways of defining and describing the type, even if no new material is found. We may find that some characteristics are important that we had formerly ignored. Useful type concepts are always and necessarily mutable: they evolve continually as more material is found, but also as we develop new ideas about what is and is not important.

Within any typological system, the types must have two characteristics: identity and meaning. A type which cannot be recognized by any objective measure has obviously no practical utility. It would be possible, in theory, to conceive of a type including all of the pottery made at Pueblo Bonito between 1100 and 1125 CE, and such a type would have enormous interpretive utility if it could be recognized. In fact, it cannot: there is no way of differentiating the pottery made at Pueblo Bonito from that made at other nearby sites. On the other hand, it is also possible to designate types that are readily recognizable—for example, all vessels having scratch marks on one side—but that have no evident significance for any purpose.

3.1 The Criterion Of Identity

The basic criterion of identity for artifact types have been designated as variables, and attributes. To make the distinction in the simplest terms, ‘color’ is a variable, while ‘red’ is one of the attributes of the color variable. Artifact types are never designated on the basis of all their visible attributes. To do so would result in a typology in which every single object was a separate type, since no two things are ever absolutely identical. Rather, certain variables are selected out as a basis for the differentiation of types, while others are ignored. To cite one example, color is usually treated as a significant variable in the case of pottery types, because it is something produced deliberately by the vessel makers, whereas it is nearly always ignored in classifications of stone tools, because it is an accidental property of the lithic material selected. Some qualities are ignored simply because they do not vary: they are common to all of the types in a typology.

Every variable has a specified set of attributes, and these also are selected in accordance with the needs of the typologist. How much distinction is made between attributes of the same variable—colors, for example— will depend partly on their identifiability, but also on how much hair-splitting is necessary for the typologist’s purposes. Pottery vessels made in the prehistoric American Southwest may exhibit a very wide variety of surface colors, but typologists have generally been content to assign them to five color categories: white wares, yellow wares, buff wares, orange wares, and red wares.

3.2 The Question Of Purpose

Above all, it is the typologist’s purpose that determines which variables and which attributes are selected in making a classification. Artifact classifications can in practice be made for a very wide variety of purposes, and classifications that yield meaningful results for one purpose may not do so for another.

The various purposes that may be served by artifact classifications can for convenience be characterized as basic, ancillary, and instrumental. Basic purposes are served when we classify objects in such a way as to learn or to express something important about the objects themselves. Pottery vessels, for example, may be classified on the basis of their constituent clays and tempers, which indicate where they were made, or they may be classified on the basis of vessel shapes, which may indicate what they were used for, or they may be classified on the basis of decorative designs, which will say something about the cultural preferences of the makers and users.

Objects, however, may also be classified for ancillary purposes: not because we want to learn or say something about the material itself, but because we want to use it as a guide to other understandings. Pottery types and certain stone tool types have long been treated as ‘index fossils’ or horizon markers, to identify a particular culture or a particular period in time. Their presence in a site may enable us to date that site within a century or even a generation, or to say that it was inhabited by a particular people and not by another, contemporary people. Some rather elaborate and highly particularized pottery classifications have been developed primarily as an aid to dating sites. Classifications made for this purpose will place special emphasis on whatever features show the most recognizable variability in time and space, whether or not any functional significance can be attached to them. Other kinds of ancillary classifications have been developed in order to yield information about manufacturing technologies, about resource acquisition, and for other purposes.

Some classifications are also made purely in the interest of practical convenience; for example, economy of description. Editors will usually not allow the archaeologist an unlimited number of pages in which to describe a mass of finds, such as beads or cutting tools. For economy of space they must be described in groups rather than individually. Some classifications are also made for the same reason that library books are classified: there must be a coherent way of dividing up the material into groups, for purposes of storage.

3.3 Frequency Seriation

When artifact types are used as a basis for the dating of sites, this is often done through the technique of frequency seriation. We recognize that cultures do not evolve in time through a series of instantaneous leaps, in which old artifact types are suddenly and totally replaced by new ones. Rather, there is a gradual process of transformation and replacement, in which some new types are becoming increasingly common at the same time that older ones are becoming less common. Consequently, sites may be assigned to a particular developmental phase, such as Pueblo II or Pueblo III, not on the basis of types absolutely present or absent, but on the percentages of particular types present or absent.

Obviously, frequency seriation requires quantification: the actual counting of the numbers of each artifact type present. It is for this reason that artifact typologies must be different from other kinds of classifications, such as culture classifications. A typology is a sorting and counting system, and as a result it must have a degree of rigor not necessarily found in other classifications. The complete typology must be a comprehensive set of categories (types), such that there is one and only one type for each object found. The types must all be defined on the basis of the same set of criteria, and they must be mutually exclusive.

By way of summation, it may be said that a typology is a conceptual system made by partitioning a specified field of entities into a comprehensive set of mutually exclusive categories (types), according to a uniform set of criteria dictated by the purposes of the typologist. Within any typology, each type is a category created by typologists, into which they can place discrete objects having specific identifying characteristics, to distinguish them from objects having other characteristics, in a way that is meaningful to the purposes of the typology.

4. Problems And Controversies: The ‘Typological Debate’

Everyone recognizes that archaeological types are not self-labeled; it is the classifiers who give them names and definition. There has nevertheless been a very long-running debate over whether our types are ‘natural’ or ‘artificial.’ Are we merely ‘finding the joints in nature,’ as one proponent has it, or are we imposing our own artificial order on nature? In reality, both things are true: nearly all artifact types are partly natural and partly artificial. They are natural in that the differences between one object and another have objective reality; they were not created by us. On the other hand it is we, the typologists, who decide which distinguishing characteristics we will focus on, and which we will ignore, in making a typology. There may often be varying degrees of ‘naturalness’ between types in the same typology. Some types will stand out very sharply in a great many respects, while we may decide to differentiate other types only because of minor stylistic differences that are nevertheless important for dating purposes.

A related question is whether types should be created by object clustering or by attribute clustering. Should we begin our typology by dividing up a collection of objects into groups that look intuitively similar to one another, or should we first decide which variables and attributes will be important, and then decide that all unique combinations of those attributes will automatically constitute a type? Again, the practical reality lies between the two positions. Virtually all useful typologies develop dialectically through a feedback between object clustering and attribute clustering. We begin, necessarily, with a collection of objects, and make some initial observations about what seem to be the most obvious differences, on the basis of which we divide them into types. As more material accumulates, however, our ideas about what is and is not important change, and we may add some new criteria of differentiation while eliminating others. Often we will find that we have split hairs too finely in the differentiation of some types, and not finely enough in other cases.

Types, we say, must be defined by a combination of ‘internal cohesion and external isolation.’ They must have features that are common to all of their members, but they must also lack features that are possessed by the members of other types. Archaeologists, however, have differed in their emphasis on one or another of these characteristics. Some have argued that types must be defined by central tendencies, without a strict definition of their boundaries; other have insisted that if typologies are to be used as sorting systems, every type must have clear boundaries. There is no one correct solution to this problem; it will depend to a considerable extent on the purpose for which the typology is to be used. The sharper the type boundaries, the more useful is the typology for sorting purposes. It must be recognized, however, that in practice there are very few artifact types that do not exhibit some fuzziness at the boundaries. The sorter will often, like a baseball umpire, have to make purely arbitrary decisions in borderline cases.

Although the theoretical literature on archaeological classification is voluminous, much of it bears little relation to what really happens in practice. There are two reasons for this disjunction. First, most of the literature refers to closed classifications, intended to classify only material already in hand. Such classifications can be as rigidly formal and immutable as the classifier wishes. In practice, however, the vast majority of artifact classifications are open systems, intended for the processing of future finds as well as for material already in hand. Such systems must necessarily by mutable: capable of continual adjustment as more material comes to hand.

Second, too many authors have ignored the fact that types must have not only identity, but also meaning relevant to some specific purpose or purposes. As we have seen above, a great many legitimate purposes may be served by archaeological classifications, and the nature of the classifications will vary accordingly.

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