James A. Ford

On the Concept of Types

SEVERAL years ago, Kluckhohn (1939) upbraided anthropologists in gen-eral and archeologists in particular for failure to examine critically the assumptions and concepts which lie at the foundations of their methodologies. Perhaps this well justified censure has prompted the healthy introspection that has developed in the past decade and resulted in valuable papers such as those by Rouse (1939), Krieger (1944), Brew (1946), Taylor (1948), and Ehrich (1950).

A Chronological Method Applicable to the Southeast

Any archaeologist who considers that his science is pledged to the task of rediscovering unrecorded and lost history, rather than to the collection of “curios,” is hardly in a position to deny the paramount importance of chronology. Lacking a scale which demonstrates the relative ages of the various activities of an ancient people, we are at best merely the collectors of disconnected fragments of history, and can never hope to fit these fragments together to form a complete and logical story of the past.

Comment on A. C. Spaulding, “Statistical Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact Types”

First let me say that I am thoroughly sympathetic to all efforts toward development of more accurate Methodology. But the application of statistics and other techniques to our problems, without regard for basic culture theory, cannot be regarded as an advance in technique.

Report of the Conference on Southeastern Pottery Typology

[2] The Conference on Southeastern Ceramic Typology was an informal meeting of archeologists directly concerned with the problems of analyzing the pottery recovered in the course of archeological investigation of aboriginal sites in the Southeastern United States.

From Archaeological Survey in the Lower Mississippi Valley , 1940–1947

SINCE practically everything in this report depends on the mass of potsherds collected at the expense of so much bending of backs, it becomes necessary to describe with candor the methods employed in their classification. Archaeology has not reached that stage of development in which there is only one correct way to do things, and, it is hoped, never will. What follows, therefore, is in no way intended as a treatise on the proper way to classify pottery, but merely a description of what was done by us and why — especially why. To say that the choice of methods of classification is governed by the nature of the material to be classified is a truism. But it is no less governed by the predilections and general attitudes of the classifier, and particularly by the ends which the classifier has in view. The extent to which classification may be a creative activity is perhaps not sufficiently recognized. Before embarking on a description of the actual methods of classification employed in the present study, we must therefore furnish a brief statement of our position in regard to the subject of cultural typology in general and pottery typology in particular.