In common usage, the term “grammar” is restricted to the linguistic domain: it refers to the description of a language and to the rules that govern it.
As I apply this concept to the archaeological record, we need to reflect on the wider implications of the term. The aim is to show how the term so understood provides a powerful conceptual tool for looking in an organic way at the cognitive process that accompanies every excavation. Both the epistemic and the hermeneutic dimensions of the archaeological endeavor can thus be more properly controlled and explained. The grammar looks at the excavation process as an organic whole, which must be seen precisely in its wholeness.
A fundamental corollary of a grammatical approach is that it makes it possible to seamlessly translate the multiplicity of data emerging from the excavation into a complex interplanar digital publication that affects all aspects of the excavation process.
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