What is Seriation dating?

Seriation Dating: Ordering the Past Through Style (For Real!)

Okay, so you’re digging around in the past, right? Archaeology. And you need to figure out when stuff happened. That’s where dating methods come in. You’ve probably heard of radiocarbon dating – the fancy, high-tech way to get actual dates. But what if you can’t use that? What if you’re missing the right kind of material, or the budget’s tight? That’s when you dust off a clever little trick called seriation dating.

Think of seriation as archaeology’s version of figuring out when your grandma’s old photos were taken just by looking at the hairstyles and clothes. It’s all about style! Basically, seriation—also called sequence dating—arranges artifacts from different places within the same culture in the order they were used. The idea is simple: styles change. They get popular, hit their peak, and then fade away as something new comes along. Remember those neon leg warmers from the 80s? Exactly!

So, How Does This Thing Work?

Alright, let’s break it down. The seriation process has some key steps:

Seriation: Three Flavors to Choose From

Believe it or not, there are actually different ways to do seriation:

• Frequency Seriation: This is the classic version, where you focus on the rise and fall of different styles. Those battleship curves are the star of the show here.
• Occurrence (or Sequence) Seriation: Instead of counting how many of each type you have, you just look for whether they’re there or not. This is handy for things like grave sites, where the presence of a certain item might be more important than how many there are.
• Contextual Seriation: This one looks at which artifacts are found together in the same place. If you always find style A with style B, and style B with style C, you can guess that they were used around the same time.

A Little Bit of History

The guy who really got the ball rolling with seriation was Sir William Flinders Petrie. Back in the late 1800s, he was digging around in Egypt. He had a bunch of graves, but no way to tell when they were from. So, he meticulously wrote down everything that was in each grave on strips of cardboard. Then, he shuffled those strips around until he found an order that made sense stylistically. It was genius!

Where Do We Use It?

Seriation has been used on all sorts of artifacts, from pottery to axes, all over the world. Pottery is a favorite because it’s usually everywhere at dig sites and comes in tons of different styles. For instance:

• Southwestern Ceramics: Archaeologists have used seriation to figure out the timeline of different cultures in the American Southwest based on their pottery styles.
• Bronze Age Axes: Believe it or not, you can even track the evolution of axe design over time using this method.
• Colonial Ceramics: Even the plates and bowls people used in colonial America can tell us about settlement patterns and trade.

Why Is Seriation So Great?

Okay, so why bother with seriation? Well, it’s got a few things going for it:

• It Gives You a Timeline: Even if you can’t get exact dates, you can still figure out what came before what.
• It Works on Almost Anything: As long as styles change over time, you can use seriation.
• It Shows the Big Picture: It can help you see how cultures changed and spread across regions.

But It’s Not Perfect…

Now, before you get too excited, seriation isn’t a magic bullet. It has some limitations:

• No Actual Dates: You only get relative dates, not calendar years.
• Styles Have to Change Gradually: It assumes that styles evolve smoothly, which isn’t always true.
• Other Stuff Can Mess It Up: Changes in popularity might be due to things other than time, like changes in trade or population.
• You Have to Know Your Stuff: If you misclassify your artifacts, the whole thing falls apart.
• Good Data Is Key: You need a decent amount of good-quality data to make it work.

The Bottom Line

Seriation is still a fantastic tool for archaeologists. It helps us piece together the past by looking at how styles change over time. Sure, it’s not as precise as some other methods, but it’s a powerful way to understand the story of humanity, especially when you’re working with limited information. And who knows? Maybe one day, they’ll be using seriation to date our stuff. What will they say about our obsession with avocado toast?