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”

The archaeological record, unlike a language, is not so organic. It is vast congeries of disaggregated data. But for few exceptions, the constituents as found are not the constituents as operative. Hence their grammar 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.

A grammar of the archaeological record is, we might say, a grammar at the power of two. There are two concomitant aspects, which correspond to the double nature of such an archaeological grammar:

• how the totality of the data as found can be accounted for, i. e., how a grammar can document the disaggregated elements as found, 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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Recording and Archive

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

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 possible. 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 sample (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.