2.6: Artefacts and Archaeological Context






The difference between

Currants, Raisins, and Sultanas

To use the analogy mentioned above a currant cake is a cake with currants in it. But the cake is not composed, or even given its texture and flavour by those currants.



The one on the left is a Woman's World Lemon and currant loaf while the one on the right is Gluten Free Apple and Currant Cake (http://thefatmancooks.com/).

In the bottom pair, the one on the left is Chickpea Salad with Carrots and Currants and on the right a bowl of Morroccan curry. In this analogy, the currants stand in for the loose artefacts, the cake is the context of which they form only a part. It is not the currants that give the context these cakes their specific nature, but the combination of the components of the matrix (context), without which a currant is just a currant. And if you made a pile of currants picked out of these two cakes, you'd not know whether the cake they'd come from was the apple-flavoured gluten-free one, or the lemon one.


Lyman, R.L. A Historical Sketch on the Concepts of Archaeological Association, Context, and Provenience. J Archaeol Method Theory 19, 207–240 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-011-9107-2

Tamara Kroftova comments:
"The analogy cited above may seem a little trivial, but reveals an important point that is so often not given enough weight in any insular archaeological discussion of artefact hunting, that it is not the object (no matter how characteristic) that should be the focus of any discussion, but the context that is exploited to produce the coveted collectable".    

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