On the origin,history,means of implementation and weaknesses of archaeological cross dating

Abstract

The term ‘cross dating’ originated in dendrochronology in the 1920s and was not initially used by North American archaeologists although the method was used. The method was used by European archaeologists since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Authors of the North American literature on cross dating speak of correlation of materials of known age with materials of unknown age but typically do not indicate how the correlation is to be established. Occasionally the assumption underpinning the cross-dating method is said to involve cultural transmission resulting in typological similarity of artifact specimens, thereby warranting the inference that formal similarity implicates temporal similarity even when artifact specimens are considerable distances apart geographically. Introductory textbooks on archaeological method generally provide incomplete discussion of the cross-dating method and do not always use the term. The archaeological cross-dating method can be implemented using the cross dating by association technique, the typological cross-dating technique, or the contextual cross-dating technique. All three depend on utilizing artifact types unlikely to be independently replicated and referred to as index fossils, horizon styles, and other terms. The inference of temporal similarity may be said to represent contemporaneity or synchroneity, but one must keep in mind that formally similar artifacts, or specimens that belong to the same type (homotaxis), need not represent the same calendric moment but instead a period of some duration.