Chronology is a necessary first step to wringing historical meaning from the archaeological record. Because the archaeological record is a contemporary phenomenon, time is an inferred dimension in archaeology. Here we present three different types of chronologies for the Pope site using methods we have developed to infer and evaluate archaeological chronologies for artifact assemblages included so far in DAACS.

The three different chronologies for the Pope site are described below. Chronologies for every archaeological site in DAACS are produced by DAACS staff using the same methods. As a result, DAACS chronologies are standardized and provide the best means for comparing data from multiple sites and regions.

Our choice of methods is driven by both theoretical and practical considerations. On the theory side, we are interested in placing assemblages as events in time so that we can chart trends in assemblage content - say the frequency of tea vessels - across multiple sites. However, assemblages are not instantaneous events. Assemblages accumulate over periods of time, usually decades. Some chronological methods in historical archaeology provide estimates of the mean of the assemblage temporal distribution, while others do not. Termini post and ante quem, the most commonly encountered methods, are estimates of the upper and lower extreme values of the assemblage temporal distribution, not its mean. They are therefore poorly suited to our purposes. Two methods, frequency seriation and mean ceramic dating, do offer estimates of temporal distribution means and we rely on them here. We do, however, provide TPQs in the following analyses.

Phase assignments, mean ceramic dates, and TPQs are generated using ceramic ware dates found on the Ceramic Ware and Mean-Ceramic-Date Types page in the About the Database section. If a site's principal investigator produced a site chronology using different dates and methods, it is discussed on the site's background page. DAACS users are also encouraged to explore the Mean Ceramic Date Queries for dating individual contexts, features, and stratigraphic groups.

For each site, DAACS staff attempt to produce an intra-site chronology using seriation methods. The units in the seriation are ceramic assemblages from contexts with more than five sherds. Plowzone and topsoil contexts are excluded from this analysis. An initial seriation solution is derived using correspondence analysis of type frequencies in the assemblages. This order is then compared to an order derived from mean ceramic dates. If the orders are correlated, we assign assemblages - and the contexts and stratigraphic groups to which they belong - to phases based on their CA scores. Phases can be further evaluated by plotting them on a Harris Matrix (for details see Neiman, Galle and Wheeler 2003).

Based on the correspondence analysis, DAACS divided the Pope site occupation into 3 temporal phases. The ceramics from Feature 005,  the cellar at Structure 4, comprise a large portion of the assemblage for Phase 1.  P01 is dominated by colonoware, with Staffordshire Mottled and Westerwald contributing to the early date.  Ceramic assemblages from F001 (cellar) and F002 (posthole) from Structure 2 and the ceramic assemblage from Feature 53, SG13 fall into Phase 2 (P02).  Ceramics from Feature 007, the cellar at Structure 1, comprise Phase 03.

DAACS staff also produce a site-wide Mean Ceramic Date and TPQs using ceramic-ware types from all stratified, non-plowzone contexts at a given site. A total of 733 ceramic sherds from non-plowzone and non-topsoil contexts at the Pope site contributed to the following dates.

The Pope site's Mean Ceramic Date of 1769.5 places the entire site's occupation in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Two other measures that are less sensitive to excavation errors and taphonomic processes that might introduce a small amount of anomalously late material into an assemblage were used. They are TPQp90 and TPQp95. The TPQp95 of 1775 provides a robust estimate of the site's TPQ based on the 95th percentile of the beginning manufacturing dates for all the ceramics comprising it. The TPQp90 of 1762 provides a more robust estimate of the site's TPQ based on the 90th percentile of the beginning manufacturing dates for all the ceramics comprising it.

The Pope site had no plowzone or topsoil contexts since these stratigraphic layers were mechanically stripped prior to excavation.  As a result, the MCD and TPQs that result from this analysis are identical to the MCD and TPQs generated in the previous section.

Click on the following link to access a seriation chronology for the Pope site. We use the indefinite article to signify that it is not the only chronology possible, nor even the best one possible.