Archaeology: contextual

Giorgio Buccellati – August 2026

I am making the case that archaeology based on contextual excavation and correlative typology (type 2 below) is the only epistemic dimension that is uniquely distinctive from any other discipline, and thus the one that is properly the object of this grammar.

(2) Contextual excavation and correlative typology

The proper type of excavation is one that aims to understand the context as the matrix within which the “things” are found. In this case, archaeology refers, stricto sensu, to the excavation of a matrix that includes a multitude of fragments, which are sometimes preserved in their original aggregation (as with a burial), but are otherwise and for the most part disjointed from each other. We have then, by its very nature, a body of data that is no longer part of a living tradition that can interpret the data for us.

As individual elements are extracted from the matrix, they must be described according to a typology that relies on well defined formal characteristics: at first, this is independent of the meaning we can attribute to the elements (morphology), but it serves as the foundation for arriving at a such attribution (semiotics).

This is what I consder to be the primary epistemic system, and the one with which this grammar is properly concerned.

The primacy of contextual archaeology

Stricto sensu, the term assumes excavation as the primary epistemic goal, a process which archaeology shares with no other discipline. It is on the basis of such prior stratigraphic analysis that the subsequent step of typological analysis is taken, a process that is shared with a number of other disciplines.

A Mesopotamian “tell” like Urkesh is a prime example of a setting to which stratigraphic analysis applies. There was no standing monument visible when excavations started, and most likely none had been in view for some three millennia. Only a few surface sherds gave us a clue as to the potential occupational periods, plus two objects that had been sold on the market and could be assumed to come from the site.