Ancient CyprusAncient Cyprus

Glossary Archaeological method and dating

Typology

A system for sorting objects into classes and types by shape, fabric and decoration, so that like can be compared with like and dated.

A typology groups objects by shared features and gives each group a label, such as a ware, a shape class or a numbered type. Once a type has been dated from well-recorded finds, other examples of the same type can be dated by comparison. Typologies are working tools: each scholar draws the lines slightly differently, and the same object can carry different labels in different systems.

Cypriot archaeology rests on a few large typologies. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition volumes set out the pottery and sculpture of the Iron Age, Paul Åström classified the wares of the Middle and Late Bronze Age, and Dikaios and Stewart did the same for Vounous and the Early Bronze Age. The systems used for figurines are compared in How Cypriot Figurines Are Classified. A typological date says when a type was in use; the burial of any single piece may be later.

Related terms

  • Seriation

    A relative dating method that arranges groups of finds in sequence according to how the popularity of their types rises and falls.

  • Relative chronology

    An ordering of sites, layers or objects as earlier or later than one another, without fixing them to calendar years.

  • Type-site

    The site that gives its name to a culture, ware or phase, or whose finds serve as the standard reference for it.

  • Floruit

    Latin for 'it flourished': the period when a person, workshop, style or object type was most active or most common.

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