data requires its subdivision into groups before any other analytical or interpretive procedures can be undertaken. In archaeology, this has been true in the case both of artifacts and of cultures. As a result, archaeological classification has a long history, and in the broadest sense it probably dates back to the beginnings of archaeology itself. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, scientific classification developed hand in hand with scientific archaeology.

Preliminary Considerations and Definitions

If classification is the most fundamental of interpretive activities in archaeology, it is also one of the most complex and one of the most controversial. There are, to begin with, two quite different kinds of archaeological classifications, respectively, of artifactual finds and of “cultures” (variously also designated as horizons, patterns, aspects, etc.). The procedures involved are so different for both cases, and the characteristics of the classifications themselves so different, that their histories must be considered separately. There are, in addition, classifications of such things as house types, burial types, and decorative styles that fall somewhere between artifact classifications and culture classifications. They are classifications of abstractions rather than of concrete things, but they are confined in each case to one particular kind of abstraction while culture classifications are based on a whole range of abstractions involving different kinds of evidence.

Culture classifications are akin to, and in some sense derived from, the historian’s traditional practice of periodizing the past—as, for example, into successive phases that are called Tudor, Jacobean, and Restoration. In archaeology, however, culture classifications attempt to encompass and to summarize both the spatial and the temporal variability of archaeological remains, creating units of analysis that are believed to represent the normative culture of a certain specific region during a specific interval of time. The Fort Ancient Culture of the Ohio River Valley and the Tripolye Culture of Neolithic Eastern Europe are examples of culture classification. Very frequently these schemes have a genetic character akin to that in language classification; that is, they recognize “parent” and “daughter” cultures in a chronological sequence.

Artifact classifications are usually nongenetic. They are however enormously variable, depending partly on the nature of the material being classified. The two most common kinds of artifact classifications are those of pottery and lithics (especially projectile points), but the salient features that are considered in the two cases are quite different. Pottery classifications are usually designed for use with small fragments; as a result, they place emphasis on stylistic and componential features rather than on overall form, which often cannot be determined. Projectile point classifications, on the other hand, are designed for use on whole specimens or large fragments and are based largely on criteria of form. The variables to be considered in classification also depend on what characteristics have been found to be temporally or chronologically significant; for example, color in the case of most pottery classifications but not in most lithic classifications.

However, the most important differences among artifact classifications depend on the purposes for which they were developed. A major distinction can be made between basic or essentialist classifications, which are designed to yield information about the material being classified, and instrumentalist classifications, in which the classified material is used for some purpose external to the material itself, such as the dating of archaeological sites. Essentialist classifications are often developed for the instruction of a wider public, for example, through museum displays and popular books, while instrumentalist classifications are developed only for “in-house” use among archaeologists and find expression chiefly in technical monographs. There are also purely ad hoc classifications whose only purpose is convenience: very often, to permit the description of a large and diverse mass of material in a limited number of monograph pages (see Adams and Adams 1991, 157–168). Most archaeological bead classifications seem to fall into this last category.

Many, but not all, artifact classifications are typologies—here defined as classifications that have been made for the specific purpose of sorting