Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:05:51.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Contemporaneity and Cross-dating in Archaeological Interpretation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Thomas Carl Patterson
Thomas Carl Patterson*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley, California
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

That cultural units are contemporary merely means that they are assigned to the same arbitrary division of time, or period. The degree of contemporaneity which is implied when units are assigned to the same period depends upon the duration of the units and the length of the period. Correlation is the alignment of sequences of units or the placement of units with respect to sequences. Synchronic correlation, or cross-dating, involves assigning units to the same period because they are contemporary. When correlations are based on contemporaneity, detailed interpretations of the archaeological evidence are possible. Precise cross-dating permits more detailed statements about cultural process and relationship. Precise cross-dating is possible when units are assigned to periods which have brief spans in time or when reference is made to a chronological framework which is not defined in terms of the archaeological materials. Cross-dating is most credible when both the sequences of units in the different localities and the patterning of each cultural unit are known and understood.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , January 1963 , pp. 389 - 392
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1963

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A draft of this paper was presented at the spring meeting of the Kroeber Anthropological Society and the Southwestern Anthropological Association, Berkeley, April 20, 1962.

References

Bordes, François 1950 Principes d'une methode d'étude des techniques de débitage et de la typologie du Paléolithique ancien et moyen. L'Anthropologic, Tome 54, Nos. 1-2, pp. 19–34. Paris.Google Scholar
Childe, Vere Gordon 1956 Piecing Together the Past; the Interpretation of Archaeological Data. Frederick A. Praeger, New York.Google Scholar
Ford, James Alfred 1949 Cultural Dating of Prehistoric Sites in Viru Valley Peru. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. 43, Pt. 1, Pp . 29–89. New York.Google Scholar
Hanfmann, George M. A. 1951 The Bronze Age in the Near East I. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 355-65. Baltimore.Google Scholar
Heizer, Robert F. (Editor) 1958 A Guide to Archaeological Field Methods. The National Press, Palo Alto.Google Scholar
Huxley, Thomas Henry 1896 Geological Contemporaneity and Persistent Types of Life [1862]. In Essays, Vol. 8, pp. 272–304. D. Appleton & Company, New York.Google Scholar
Kidder, Alfred V., Jennings, Jesse D., and Edwin, M. Shooku 1946 Excavations at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication 561. Washington.Google Scholar
Menzel, Dorothy 1958 Problemas en el estudio del Horizonte Medio en la arqueologia peruana. Revista del Museo Regional de Ica, Año IX, No. 10, pp. 24–56. Ica.Google Scholar
Menzel, Dorothy 1959 The Inca Occupation of the South Coast of Peru. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 125-42. Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Movius, Hallam L. Jr. 1944 Early Man and Pleistocene Stratigraphy in Southern and Eastern Asia. Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard, University, Vol. XIX, No. 3. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Pethie, W. M. Flinders 1904 Methods and Aims in Archaeology, MacMillan & Company, London and New York.Google Scholar
Ralph, Elizabeth K. 1959 University of Pennsylvania Radiocarbon Dates III. American Journal of Science Radiocarbon Supplement, Vol. 1, pp. 45–58. New Haven.Google Scholar
Rouse, Irving 1955 On the Correlation of Phases of Culture. American Anthropologist, Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 713-22. Menasha.Google Scholar
Rowe, John Howland 1959 Archaeological Dating and Cultural Process. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 317-24. Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Rowe, John Howland 1961 Stratigraphy and Seriation. American Antiquity, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 324-30. Salt Lake City.Google Scholar
Rowe, John Howland 1962 Stages and Periods in Archaeological Interpretation. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 40–54. Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, Claude A. E. 1948 Stratigraphie comparée et Chronologie de l'Asie Occidentale (Hie et He Millénaires). Syrie, Palestine, Asie Mineure, Chypre, Perse et Caucase. Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, London,Google Scholar
Willey, Gordon R. and Phillips, Philip 1958 Method and Theory in American Archaeology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar