Internet Archaeol. 24. Ellis et al. The numbering system

4.2.3 The numbering system used for the East Field at Isthmia

The method we have developed overcomes the difficulties illustrated in Appendix A by considering both the process of doing archaeological field work (the work-flow) and the uses to which the evidence it generates will be put (data-flow). From the outset, in its naming of the data and in their organisation within a 'hierarchy of abstractions' (see Figure 16), our procedure sets agenda that represents equally the objects present on site and the objects populating a database. In the following sections, we describe this method in a hypothetical setting so that this method will not be obscured by the details of our particular site. We also provide a detailed description of the archaeological terminology for the stratigraphic relationships of walls, as we feel these are less well understood by the archaeological community than might be expected, especially in the study of archaeological sites with architecture. These relationships are central to our method for masonry analysis.

Figure 7: The East Field at Isthmia, example of walls with a 'bonding' relationship.
Figure 8: The East Field at Isthmia, example of walls with an 'abutting' relationship.
Figure 9: The East Field at Isthmia, example of walls with an 'overlying' relationship.

The most basic unit in this 'hierarchy of abstractions', the Wall Segment (WS), is a section of masonry that extends between a wall's intersections with other wall segments. Its edges constitute the Wall Faces (WF), while the intersections with other wall segments and the site Features (F) provide the locations of Stratigraphic Relationships (SR). How each wall segment meets with the next - whether it bonds, abuts, cuts, overlies or underlies it (Figs 7-9, 11) - is called the Stratigraphic Relationship between them. This is also illustrated in Figure 10 where the east end of WS_001 is defined by its intersection with WS_002 and WS_003. Likewise, WS_002 and WS_003 are defined by their intersection with each other at WS_001. For the basic terminology used for wall relationships, see Appendix B.

Figure 10: Example of Wall Segments and Stratigraphic Relationships.
Figure 11: The East Field at Isthmia, example of walls with a 'cutting' relationship.

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