ABSTRACT
The detailed dissection of a site and the elaborate recording of all its observable phenomena are simply the preludes to an attempt to give meaning to the evidence: to decide how contexts were formed, to recognize and interpret patterns in excavated surfaces which show the former presence of buildings, fences, ditches, ramparts, fields and all the other traces which human occupation leaves in the ground; to explain, as far as possible, the complete sequence of events on the site. This mass of evidence must then be set into a pair of chronological frames, one relative, one absolute.
