Preface

For full bibliographical information see Front Matter.

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“Grammar”

The concept of”grammar” entails more than a set of rules. It proposes a coherent and tightly knit organism, capable of accounting for the most minute of details while a the same time viewing the whole in its structural complexity. The linguistic model operates with a living organism, even with the so-called “dead” languages: Babylonian has not been spoken for more than two millennia, but it is a living organism to the extent that we can retrieve it from the available texts.

We will look in some detail below at what the application of this concept entails.

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The “archaeological record”

In common practice, the term “record” has a double meaning when referring to archaeology:

• The physical record consists of the “things” as found, and then, when that is the case, the things as preserved.
• The referential level consists of the documentary and interpretive frame within which the physical record is placed.
  
  

The grammar is the instrument that converts the record from a physical to a referential level.

Unlike a language, the archaeological physical record is not an organic whole: it is rather vast congeries of disaggregated data. But for few exceptions, the things as found do not reflect their original living setting. It is as if an ancient text were discovered not in one piece, shredded into a multitude of scattered fragments which only partially add up to the original complete document. Hence a grammar of the archaeological record must go through two intermediate steps, one that defines the “things” as found, the other that defines them in terms of their original function and thus re-aggregates them into wholeness.

Such a grammar is, we might say, a grammar at the power of two. There are two concomitant aspects:

• how the totality of the data as found can be accounted for, i. e., how a grammar can document the disaggregated elements in their emplacement, and then
• how the data can be recomposed into unity, i. e., how a grammar can lead to a reconstruction of the cultural whole to which the fragments give witness.

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Current conventions

All excavations have had and have some guiding criteria on how to record the finds as they are being made. We may distinguish two phases in the process.

1. The earliest excavations relied exclusively on diaries, with drawings and eventually photographs to which reference could be made in the diary itself. The format was exclusively in the form of a narrative,. and the underlying criteria were essentially implicit, i. e, they were not spelled out in any systematic fashion.
2. The notion of a database developed with reference to the typology of the categories of objects found. Initially, this resulted simply in consigning the treatment of the objects to specialists (cereamologists, epigraphists, etc.), who would apply the standards current in their respective fields in describing the individual objects. With the advent of computers, this developed into a more articulate approach, one that was based on explicit definitions and corresponding codes.
   
   

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The novelty of the grammar

Vis-à-vis the current recording methods, this grammar proposes two new levels of analysis.

1. The categorization system applies not only to objects, but also to the stratigraphic record. The “diary” is broken down into distinct categories, each defined by a specific code and linked to the date when it was made and to the individual excavator responsible for the observation. It does, in other words, create a database of stationary elements.
2. The data are integrated in an argument type presentation, rather than being just given as a database: this results from the grammar being used uniformly by all members of the excavation team, and not only by the specialist in any given type of objects.

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Recording and archive

The system as presented here affects two distinct moments in the confrontation with the data.

1. The initial recording takes place first of all in the field and, subsequently, in the laboratory, the museum, the library: the grammatical categorization is applied to the data in these various phases of the work, and it is the rigor and coherence of the criteria behind the categorization (the “grammar”) that make it possible to construe a global archive all the while the analysis is taking place.
2. The utilization of this archive is a distinct operation that does not, in and of itself, require knowledge of the mechanisms utilized in the recording phase. It is, however, the total conceptual match between the two that makes the whole endeavor new and powerful. It is in this sense that the word “Record” is used – to signify on the one hand the data as they are being identified and assembled, and on the other the resulting construction as it is being consulted and studied.

The operational mechanisms used in the initial phase of recording proper are covered in a separate digital book. These pertain exclusively to the documentary or recording phase as such, and are needed when producing the archive during excavations.

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Goals and limits

My main goal is to suggest ways to “grammaticalize” the stratigraphic record, by proposing a specific model (this grammar) which is applied to a given body of data (the UGR website).

I would like to claim some power for this approach, but I will not claim that it is the correct grammar. I hope my effort might generate sufficient interest in the subject matter, and that the supporting exemplification will prove to be sufficiently valid, so as to elicit a new awareness for the underlying problems, a realistic sense of reliance on the electronic medium used for its genuine powers, and a discussion of the substantive issues involved in this effort.

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“Global” record and browser edition

The system as described has been developed in the course of the excavations at Tell Mozan, ancient Urkesh, and the results are embodied in the publication of this global record. The ultimate form taken by the record is that of a browser edition, as described in the UGR website.

A primary goal of the system, and of the browser edition that derives from it, remains the primacy of the stratigraphic record as such, which is deemed in principle to be completed at the end of the excavation. Thus, in the measure in which our own ability to work within the system as here described increases, we intend to publish the full stratigraphic record of any given operation at end of each excavation season, allowing for typological updates to the extent in which our own typological analysis proceeds. What makes the electronic publication unique in this respect is precisely the ability to update the archive in such a way that it remains at all times an integrated whole.