# Archaeological inference: date the context, not just the object — Study worksheet

[Study guides](https://unireadinglist.com/guides/archaeological-inference/)

[Course topic: Archaeology](https://unireadinglist.com/subjects/anthropology/#course-archaeology)

Sources checked: 2026-11-04

Study route and exercise: University Reading List editorial project.

All contexts, coins and records below are invented paper data. No excavation, collection, sampling of a site or handling of human remains is required.

## Choose your starting point

- [ ] Begin with an open activity route
  Use Paskey/Cisneros for concise concepts, formation processes and dating tasks.

- [ ] Build a broad methods framework
  Use the ninth-edition Archaeology for the connections among questions, evidence and techniques.

- [ ] Examine interpretation
  Use Reading the Past after basic methods to compare what different theoretical commitments make visible.

## Compare the three books

### Digging into Archaeology: A Brief OER Introduction to Archaeology with Activities

Amanda Wolcott Paskey; AnnMarie Beasley Cisneros · 2020
Free concepts and activities

Choose it when: You need short explanations and structured practice.
Use another route when: You need a complete technical field manual or an advanced theory monograph.
Selected reading: Read chapters 4–5 on formation/preservation, 8 on dating and 16 on legal/ethical issues.
Limits and trade-offs: Survival, recovery and association mediate the record; activity data are not the past itself.

#### Try before choosing

Draw the supplied context order before consulting the coin dates.
Check your work: Cuts and fills are events in the sequence, not dates inferred from depth alone.

Your notes:

________________________________

[Official free reading](https://asccc-oeri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OERI-Archaeology_Final_4_29.pdf)

[Book record and access options](https://unireadinglist.com/subjects/anthropology/digging-archaeology-paskey-cisneros/)

### Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice

Colin Renfrew; Paul G. Bahn; Elizabeth DeMarrais · 9 · 2024
Broad methodological course

Choose it when: You need an integrated survey beyond dating.
Use another route when: Your immediate need is only a compact introductory worksheet.
Selected reading: Use the selected ninth edition’s dating, formation and interpretation discussions, matching the contents.
Limits and trade-offs: Breadth requires selection; learning a technique does not remove uncertainty in its archaeological context.

#### Try before choosing

Make separate columns for observation, method and conclusion in one dating claim.
Check your work: An object’s date supports a context only through the stated association.

Your notes:

________________________________

ISBN: 9780500297094

[Book record and access options](https://unireadinglist.com/subjects/anthropology/archaeology-theories-methods-practice/)

### Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology

Ian Hodder; Scott Hutson · 3 · 2003
Interpretive theory

Choose it when: You can follow basic archaeological evidence and want to examine meaning, agency and history.
Use another route when: You need first definitions of stratigraphy or excavation terminology.
Selected reading: Read the third edition’s discussions of contextual interpretation, agency and history alongside a methods text.
Limits and trade-offs: Multiple perspectives do not make every story equally compatible with the evidence.

#### Try before choosing

Propose two depositional histories consistent with the follow-up packet.
Check your work: Both must obey every cut/fill/seal relation and differ on D’s date.

Your notes:

________________________________

ISBN: 9780521528849

[Book record and access options](https://unireadinglist.com/subjects/anthropology/reading-the-past/)

## Check your preparation

### What is a terminus post quem?

Your notes:

________________________________

### Does a lower deposit always contain older objects?

Your notes:

________________________________

### Does an open text authorize field collection?

Your notes:

________________________________

## Six steps with a concrete output

- [ ] Draw the events

Selected reading: Open text: chapter 8.

Make this: Write U\<D\<K\<F\<S from the supplied relations.

Check your work: Include the cutting event K separately from its fill F.

Your notes:

________________________________

- [ ] Audit association

Selected reading: Open text: formation processes.

Make this: Record which object belongs to which secure context.

Check your work: A bag label is not unchallengeable provenance.

Your notes:

________________________________

- [ ] Add absolute bounds

Selected reading: Methods text: dating.

Make this: Translate the two mint dates and seal date into inequalities.

Check your work: Do not turn a lower bound into an exact date.

Your notes:

________________________________

- [ ] Test an overclaim

Selected reading: Reading the Past with methods.

Make this: Evaluate “D must predate 180”.

Check your work: Supply a counterexample that respects the full order.

Your notes:

________________________________

- [ ] Change the attribution

Selected reading: Open text: formation.

Make this: Remove the D coin when its bag assignment is corrected.

Check your work: Only constraints depending on that association disappear.

Your notes:

________________________________

- [ ] Write a reconstruction

Selected reading: All three routes.

Make this: Give an admissible chronology and the remaining range.

Check your work: One possible sequence is not the unique history.

Your notes:

________________________________

## Worked exercise: A cut, a fill and two coins

Invented contexts: floor U is beneath deposit D; pit cut K cuts D; F fills K; intact seal S covers D and F. A reliable fictional construction record dates S to year 200. A securely incorporated coin in D was manufactured no earlier than 140; a securely incorporated coin in F no earlier than 180. Give the event order and date bounds. Does D necessarily predate 180?

Assumptions: Relations are correctly observed; coins are not later intrusions, dates share one calendar, and cuts/fills precede the seal. Manufacture gives a lower bound, not a deposition date. No other absolute dates are supplied.

Your notes:

________________________________

## Change an assumption: The supposed D coin came from the pit fill

A bagging correction establishes that the 140-or-later coin was recovered from F, not D. The 180-or-later F coin, every context relationship and S=200 remain secure. There is now no securely associated dated object in D.

Your notes:

________________________________

## Before moving on

- Choose books by introductory practice, methodological breadth and interpretive need.
- Build relative order before adding secure absolute bounds.
- Revise only the constraints affected by an association change.

## Answer and interpretation

### What is a terminus post quem?

A lower bound: deposition cannot precede the manufacture of a securely associated object. It need not happen immediately afterwards.

### Does a lower deposit always contain older objects?

No. Residual objects and later intrusion complicate associations. The event relationships and the object’s context must be specified.

### Does an open text authorize field collection?

No. Reading and paper exercises do not grant access, excavation or collection rights.

### A cut, a fill and two coins

1. The supplied relationships give U\<D\<K\<F\<S, with S=200. This is an event order; depth alone is not doing the inference.
2. Secure manufacture dates give D≥140 and F≥180, while both deposits predate 200. The date of D is not fixed to 140, nor F to 180.
3. D need not predate 180: D=185, K=190, F=195 and S=200 satisfy all constraints. For example U=100 also fits. A different admissible sequence can place D=150.

D lies from 140 up to, but not including, 200; F lies from 180 up to 200, with D\<K\<F. No exact deposition dates or D\<180 conclusion follow.

Test the result: Check the direction of each inequality. F≥180 together with D\<F does not imply D\<180.

### Change an assumption: The supposed D coin came from the pit fill

1. Delete D≥140 because its association premise failed. Both coins now constrain F, and the stronger surviving lower bound remains F≥180.
2. The order U\<D\<K\<F\<S=200 remains. It puts D before the seal, but supplies no absolute lower bound for D.
3. D=100, K=185, F=190 and D=190, K=193, F=195 are both possible, with an earlier U in each. The former refutes a carried-over 140 bound; the latter refutes D\<180.

D has lost its 140 lower bound. F keeps the 180 bound and all relative relations remain. An object reassignment changes only the inferences that depended on it.

Test the result: Do not say that D has become “undatable” in every sense: its relative order and upper bound remain. No actual site chronology is asserted.

## Common mistakes

### Object age becomes deposit age

Allow time between manufacture, use and deposition.

### Later minimum becomes earlier maximum

Check inequality logic before drawing a timeline.

### Interpretation ignores formation

A plausible story still must explain how evidence entered its recorded context.

## Sources and edition checks

- [Paskey/Cisneros: official open text](https://asccc-oeri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/OERI-Archaeology_Final_4_29.pdf)
  The 2020 OER is CC BY-NC 4.0; chapter 8 includes relative/absolute dating and context exercises.

- [Renfrew/Bahn/DeMarrais: publisher edition record](https://www.thamesandhudson.com/blogs/all-news-features/a-tribute-to-colin-renfrew-1937-2024)
  The ninth edition includes DeMarrais with Renfrew and Bahn; retain the selected 2024 print identity.

- [Hodder/Hutson: Cambridge third edition](https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/reading-the-past/BDB34A39D787126D79384E32397A7CDB)
  Cambridge distinguishes the 2003 third-edition print record from its later digital publication; theory complements rather than replaces contextual evidence.

These are proposed study activities, not official course assignments or a claim that every book has been read cover to cover.

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