Top Highlights

• eriation, also called artifact sequencing
• Petrie knew that styles of pottery seemed to come and go over time—in his case, he noted that some ceramic urns from the graves had handles and others had just stylized ridges in the same location on similarly shaped urns. He assumed that the change in styles was an evolutionary one, and, if you could quantify that change, he surmised it might be u...
• The seriation method works because object styles change over time; they always have and always will.
• Archaeologists investigate trash, not shop window displays, so we measure things when they are discarded; i
• But you would never have any 78s in junkyards closed before they were invented. The same is true for 45s, and 8-tracks, and cassette tapes, and LPs, and CDs, and DVDs, and mp3 players (and really, any kind of artifact).

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