Structuring wholes

Giorgio Buccellati – October 2025

From fragments to wholes

The disentangling of the matrix, which we have seen to be the hallmark of the stratigraphic process, extracts elements which are fragments of larger wholes, wholes that are not immediately apparent in the stratigraphic record. What is required next is a structuring process that identifies these wholes.

We deal here with a semiotic dimension, one that aims to replicate the semiotics of the ancients on the basis of objective patterned correlations of formally defined (hence, grammatical) traits. The ancients dealt with wholes, not with fragments – the grammar guides us in identifying these meaningful wholes, by allowing us to establish patterned correlations among formal traits.

In the data as found in the emplacement, there are different levels of disaggregation. Both an object and an installation may be found whole or shattered and incomplete. And each may in turn be correlated to larger groupings of elements that match the same formal and functional traits.

We may say that in this stage we aggregate the disaggregation. Through the definition of formal traits, we can recognize assemblages of structures and items that share the same morphology.

This patterned regularity emerges from establishing (1) correlations among formal traits of the data found at the site in the first place, and (2) correlations with different types of data from the excavaton site and from other sites.

The grammar

Epistemics gives us the tools for translating the complex physical record that emerges from the excavations onto a "known" referential record.
What results is a structured universe, which can, to some extent, claim to reflect the semiotic universe of the ancients.

	PROCESS	DATA	METHOD
2. Acquiring knowledge	Structuring	wholes
			Typology	Morphology Built environment Objects
				Semiotics Chronology Function

Process: structuring

The notion of “structuring” refers to the act of recognizing, not creating, a structure. We attribute identity to the fragments that have been found in the matrix, and consider how they fit into their full cultural context.

The structuring process consists, in other words, in identifying the structural wholes which lay behind the fragmentation within the matrix. Given the patterned regularity of identifiable formal traits, we may reasonably infer that these wholes were perceived as such (i. e.,as a tomb or as a distinctive assemblage of cups) by the ancients in a way that parallels our own perception of the same elements.

The validity of the process depends on the quality of the formal system of definitions, and on the accuracy with which the system is applied.

Data: wholes

There are two major types of “wholes,” simple and complex.

The simple wholes are elements that are physically self-contained as single “things” with a recognizable physical integrity, such as a stone, a bone, a brick, a ceramic vessel.

The complex wholes are composite structural entities that combine simple wholes in two distinctive manners, depending on whether the structural integration is the result of an original event preserved in the ground (which we call “aggregate”) or is the result of our clustering determination on the basis of typological factors (which we call “assemblage”).

Method: typology

The individual elements within an assemblage are seen to share formal traits, so that they form classes of elements. The notion of structuring refers to these classes, which are structural entities independent of their stratigraphic location, but grounded in the objective attributes that make it a proper epistemic reality.

The essence of the structuring method lies in the clustering of data according to both intra- and extra-referential formal traits.

Morphology. – The first criterion looks at data depending on their intrinsic qualities: we construct typologies on the basis of inner-referential attributes, i. e., attributes that refer exclusively to the data as such, e. g., shape or material for ceramics, iconography for glyptics, paleography or linguistic analysis for texts.
Semiotics .– The second criterion looks at the data in terms of their interaction with other data that are not morphologically similar and are drawn from a broader context, using a variety of extra-referential attributes such as the comparison with data from other excavated sites; the analysis of materials with techniques like radiocarbon dating; confrontation with the broader historical framework as defined by textual data.