Although the vast majority of archaeological classifications are concerned either with cultures or with artifacts, there are classifications also of house and building types, of burial types, of petroglyph and pictograph types, and of artistic styles. Some of these, like some of the artifact classifications, predate the beginnings of scientific archaeology. As far back as the 1750s, William Stukeley devised a classification of British earth mounds and megalithic monuments. A generation later, Colt and Cunnington proposed a fivefold classification of English barrow types. In North America, Caleb Atwater in 1820 and Squier and Davis in 1848 proposed classifications of earth mound types.
The classification of houses and of burials has always gone hand-in-hand with culture classification, much as did the classification of artifacts before the 1930s. Indeed the various monument types designated by Stukeley, by Colt and Cunnington, and by Atwater were initially regarded as the primary diagnostics for the recognition of different cultural periods. Later, house types took their place along with pottery and projectile points as defining characteristics of the various Neolithic cultures of the Old World, as well as of prehistoric American cultures. Burial types on the other hand have played an especially important role in defining the early cultures of the Nile Valley, where evidence of housing is generally lacking. In Nubia, at the beginning of the twentieth century, George A. Reisner recognized and differentiated a whole succession of previously unfamiliar ancient cultures on the basis of burial types alone.
World History
