Harris matrix

An effective method is to prepare a Harris matrix.

This Harris matrix is used for interpretation and combining contexts into ever larger units of understanding.

The order in which these events occurred and the reverse order they should have been excavated with would be demonstrated by the following Harris matrix.

He is best known for the "Harris matrix", developed in February 1973 and considered by some to be the "industry standard" for stratigraphic archaeology.

Phasing is achieved on site by many methods including intuition and experience but the main analytical tool post excavation is the Harris matrix.

This matrix is a Harris matrix, and angle brackets denote averaging (i.e. summation over ).

Entire sites can be "thrown out of phase" where relationships recorded in the Harris matrix bear no genuine association with any understandable phase of occupation.

Single context recording of a stratigraphically excavated sequence evolves into an overlay of planned contexts that build a Harris matrix during excavation.

This diagram, which is based on the Harris matrix, is designed to represent the time lapse in use of recognizable archaeological entities such as floors and pits.

The Harris matrix is a tool that aids the accurate and consistent excavation of a site and articulates complex sequences in a clear and understandable way.

(see Stratification (archeology) and Harris matrix) This is demonstrated in the gallery below of a hypothetical and abstract 5 step sequence of contexts.

In this case care must be taken to re-context the slipped deposits so the event of slippage appears in the correct place stratigraphically in the Harris matrix.

The Harris matrix is a tool used to depict the temporal succession of archaeological contexts and thus the sequence of deposition on a 'dry land' archaeological site.

Harris matrices play an invaluable role in the articulation of sequence and provide the building blocks from which higher order units of stratigraphically related events can be constructed.

Interpretive tools such as the Harris matrix and stratification are instrumental in deducing the associations of contexts on site and by deduction the function of archaeological remains.

Similar to the Harris matrix Martin Carver's system was a Carver matrix seriation diagram, known as the Carver matrix.

It is more useful to think of "higher" as it relates to the context's position in a Harris matrix, a two-dimensional representation of a site's formation in space and time.

Take the hypothetical section fig A. Here we can see 12 contexts, each numbered with a unique context number and whose sequence is represented in the Harris matrix in fig B.

Then once a relationship is established contexts can be removed from site in the reverse order they arrived in accordance with the stratigraphic excavation and the creation of a Harris matrix for the sequence being investigated.

It is preferred goal of excavation to remove all archaeological deposits and features in the reverse order they were created and construct a Harris matrix as a chronological record or "sequence" of the site.

An archaeological horizon can be understood as a break in contexts formed in the Harris matrix, which denotes a change in epoch on a given site by delineation in time of finds found within contexts.

The Harris matrix itself however serves to provide a check on observable quantifiable physical phenomena and relies on the excavator understanding which way in the sequence is 'up' and the ability of the excavator to excavate and record honestly, accurately and stratigraphically.