Relating time within the general methodological structure of archaelogical interpretation

Daniel Arroyo-Bishop

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 1996, 7, 15-26

Abstract

During the past few years we have presented and published a series of papers on the project ArchéoDATA that we have been developing in the GDR 880 of CNRS, in our quest for a methodological structure for the recording and analysis of archaeological data and the creation of a European Archaeological Information System, designed to formalise and to structure archaeological documents. The three basic components of archaeological recording and analysis are the factors “objects”, “space” and “time”. Through their interaction the archaeologist must attempt to construct an interpretation and argue his thesis. The management of data pertaining to each one of the components of “object”, “space” and “time” should be undertaken with the same elementary structure. Due to the diversity of recording methods, and to inconsistent terminology used to express what in essence are similar things, a definition based on the word “Entity” was chosen and the “Archaeological, Spatial, Temporal, Interpretative and Analytical Entities” were consequently defined. This paper presents in detail new work that has been undertaken on structuring the basic component “time”.

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