Methodology

Abstract The project’s methods for excavation and recording—laid out in this chapter—were shaped by the research questions on the social, structural, and contextual making of the Porta Stabia neighborhood. The excavation followed the “single-context” method, identifying stratigraphic units (SUs) that represented isolated activities in the past, then removing them in reverse-chronological order. The chronological relationships of SUs were represented with Harris Matrices for each of the forty-one trenches, which were linked via a sitewide Harris Matrix that included the entire excavation and tied absolute dates to relative phases. Areas of the site not subject to excavation were incorporated through the non-invasive methods of architectural and geophysical analysis. Although the project began with traditional recording on paper, it eventually transitioned to a paperless workflow using tablet computers. These methods were designed to best contextualize and interpret the data derived from large-scale excavation of a complex and rapidly changing city.