Archaeology: contextual

Giorgio Buccellati – August 2026

Contextual archaeology

Archaeology

Stratigpahic? see place

Context

a better term?

This refers, in the first place, 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.

[there is context to antiquarianism, too]

Elements

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).

The primacy of contextual archaeology

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

I am making the case that archaeology based on contextual excavation and correlative typology is the only epistemic dimension that is uniquely distinctive of archaeology vis-à-vis any other discipline, and thus the one that is properly the object of this grammar.

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, the latter being 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.

Grammar

Any professional excavation aims, in one way or another, to understand the context: this is subsumed under the conceot of stratigraphy. The grammar proposed in this digital book develops this notion in full, integrating other elements into a complex unitary view of contextual excavation at its best.