entities into discrete categories for purposes of statistical treatment. In such a system, the categories must be mutually exclusive and not overlap, so that each individual artifact or shard is assigned to one and only one category. Moreover, the set of categories must be comprehensive so that there is “a pigeonhole for every pigeon.” These features are not necessary in a classification that is made only for communication purposes; such a system may consist of a set of norms that overlap at the boundaries (see Adams and Adams 1991, 76–90). Typological classification is a relatively recent feature of scientific archaeology and is important chiefly when typological data are to be used quantitatively, or statistically. Consequently, it is a feature of artifact classifications rather than of culture classifications.

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Reconstructing vases at the British Museum

(Gamma)

Many but not all classifications, both of artifacts and of cultures, have a hierarchical feature; that is, the smallest classificatory units are grouped into larger and more inclusive units in the same way that biological species are grouped into genera. This feature is especially prevalent in pottery classifications like the “type-variety system” that has been widely used in North and Central America (Smith, Willey, and Gifford 1960; Wheat, Gifford, and Wasley 1958). Such hierarchical classifications will be here designated as taxonomies.

Renaissance and Enlightenment Foundations

The archaeology of today is an outgrowth of what was earlier called antiquarianism. It is usually said to have had its beginnings in the Renaissance period, fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, when royal and noble patrons paid for field excavations in Italy and Greece that would yield objets d’art for their private collections. Before long, the antiquarian fever spread to England, where its focus shifted from classical antiquity to the megalithic remains of late prehistory. The objects recovered from these early diggings were displayed in “cabinets of curiosities”—often a whole room or several rooms in a nobleman’s palace might be devoted to such displays. Later, a great many of the collections found their way into museums; indeed, they formed the original nuclei of some of Europe’s earliest museums.