Associating Archaeology Objects

Site objects can be associated with each other providing extra information about the Site and how it was recorded. This provides a way of relating groups of objects found in the same area that have some meaningful relationship, building up a hierarchy of associations within the Site.

Sector objects are used to define areas of the site or seabed that are not Features. Trenches, groups of scattered finds or areas that have been investigated can all be represented using a Sector. Other Sectors, Features and Artefacts can be found within a Sector.

Feature objects can be used to represent such things as large concretions, areas containing particular deposits or the ‘ghost’ remains of a container that has long since disappeared leaving just the contents. A large concretion recorded as a feature may contain a number of Artefacts and other, smaller features.

The relationship between these objects gives clues about their use.  Site Recorder allows these relationships to be recorded in a formal manner and provides tools to visualise them. The result is a hierarchical tree of relationships between Artefacts, Features and Sectors.

Objects can only be associated ‘upwards’ by being related to a ‘parent’ object. The ‘parent’ can have many ‘child’ objects below it, each linked once to the parent itself. An object does not have to be associated with a ‘parent’ and can remain unrelated to anything else. These associations are defined in the properties pages of the Sector, Feature and Artefact objects.

The use of these associations can be represented by an example:

1. A wreck site had an excavation trench defined by the bulkheads of the carpenter’s cabin

2. In the trench was found the lid of a box

3. Below the lid was found a box, the lid found earlier was the correct size to fit the box

4. Found inside the box were a chisel and a mallet

5. Also inside the box was the ‘ghost’ of a cloth bag, no cloth remained just a different colour sediment

6. Inside the ‘bag’ were found 10 identical copper nails

These relationships can be shown using the Associations display in the figure to the right. This display shows the relationships between all archaeological objects in a hierarchy with the Site at the top followed by Sectors, Features and Artefacts. Objects are then shown related to other objects with the type of relationship shown in square brackets [ ].

At the top of the ‘tree’ is the Site itself and below this is a Sector that represents Trench 1, contained by Trench 1 is the Box shown as Artefact A0002.

Below the Box is the Lid, Artefact A0001. The Lid is shown below the Box as it is related by being ‘Part of’ the Box.  Also below the Box are the Chisel and the Mallet represented by Artefacts A0003 and A0004.

Feature A0005 represents the remains of the Bag, also ‘Contained by’ the Box. Contained by the Bag Feature are the 10 Copper nails represented by Artefact A0006