METHODOLOGY \PRINCIPLES \ 313-D
1: G. Buccellati, March 2011

Primary data

A basic dichotomy
The initial confrontation
Irreplaceability and ineludibility of primary observation
Atomistic nature of primary observations
Typological clusteringas
The role of primary data in documentary publications

A basic dichotomy

     On the face of it, it would appear as self-evident that the primary data for an archaeological publication are of two types – the elements that are found in the ground (the architecture, the objects, the sherds, the samples, and so on), and the context within which they are embedded (the stratigraphic matrix). This is true enough, and the standard documentation provided, in the form of verbal description, photographs and drawings, does indeed offer an adequate representation of the data so conceived.
     There is, however, a difficulty that lies upstream of this documentary effort. And this hinges around the proper meaning of "primary data" when we deal with the archaeological evidence. The constitutive primary factor is not the thing in itself. It is not even the stratigraphic matrix presented as a static whole, reconstructed ex post facto. It is rather the single observation made of the contact associations as they are seen when the "things" are extricated from the matrix. While an object retains its typological identity regardless of its context, the typological identity of an architectural structure that has been buried in the ground is very much dependent on how it is excavated, and this is even more true when we seek to distinguish the components of a stratigraphic whole.
     It is in this sense that we can speak of dichotomy: what is "primary"? The typological entity as presented synthetically by the excavator, or the process itself through which the typological identity as been arrived at?

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The initial confrontation

It is, then, the initial confrontation with the matrix itself that retains full primacy. The image that emerges as a finished product from a disaggregation of such matrix through excavation (i.e., the building or the stratigraphic sequence) is primary only in a secondary sense, if one may say so: it is indeed a set of data that were found and remain open to a verifiable analysis, but a set that has been filtered through an interpretive process that eliminates conditions the very nature of the image being presented. As a result, to preserve and present the initial confrontation is a sine qua non condition for a proper commitment to documentary completeness.
As is only too well known, the physical reality of this association disappears at the very moment that it is identified. Hence it is the sequence of these identifying moments, of the observations made during the process that are the undisputed primary facts. If repeating the experiment is the ultimate goal, then repetition in archaeology can only mean retracing the steps of the observational iter.

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Irreplaceability and ineludibility of primary observation

If what is primary in an absolute sense is the observation of contact associations in the ground, it follows that these observations cannot be ignored. The cannot be replaced nor eluded.

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