ARH305 – Archaeological Interpretation

Petristan: The Seriation of Pottery Types

The state of Petristan is a vast landmass acknowledged as the subcontinent of India, spreading across the watershed of Paratha Valley in the West and Korma River in the East, with the early civilization which ranged from 2700 to 1700 B.C. Recent discoveries have asserted the notion that the early civilization of Paratha Valley has greatly influenced the formation of the Petristan state. Consequently, The Petristan State Archaeological Survey has selected 5000 sherds from eighteen probable sites by random sampling techniques in effort to investigate the proposed postulation. In principal, relative dating method of seriation has been …show more content…

Thirdly, sites “F” and “H” which are located in the foothills of the Parasmaipada Mountain range between the Lower Zone and Upper Zone can be discern as the Transition Zone, as the data for “F” and “H” sites seemed to overlap with the rest of the sites. Therefore, in respect to the data arranged in Table 1, we can insert and sort all of the remaining data of the Lower Zone and Upper Zone sites into their relative dates, which are presented in Table 1.2. In principal, we can now identify the updated chronological order which starts from site “A”, “E”, “T”, “C”, “UPG”, “B”, “LPG”, “G”, “D”, “GM”, “H” and “F” accordingly. Site (In chronological order from recent to oldest) | Type W1 % | Type W2 % | Type W3 % | A | 22.8 | 0 | 0 | E | 21.2 | 0 | 0 | T | 20.3 | 0 | 0 | C | 20.3 | 0 | 0 | PGU (2100 B.C.) | 19.3 | 0 | 0 | B | 17.6 | 0.6 | 0 | PGL (2450 B.C) | 9.8 | 4.0 | 0 | G | 6.2 | 7.4 | 0 | D | 1.4 | 10.4 | 0 | GM | 0.6 | 8.4 | 0 | H | 0 | 15.2 | 0 | F | 0 | 18.1 | 0 | Table 1.2 Relative Chronology of Lower Zone and Upper Zone Sites Based on Water Vessel Type

Based on the chronological order of Table 1.2, it is reasonable to assume that the Transition sites of “H” and “F” are the oldest among the rest of the sites in Lower Zone. One explanation of this statement is because both of the sites only used water vessels Type 2 which over time was phased out and replaced by water vessel type W1, which is of