seriation

In archaeology, a relative dating technique in which artefacts are organized in a time sequence according to their relative popularity.

Contextual seriation was pioneered by Flinders Petrie at Diospolis Parva, Egypt, at the end of the 19th century, and considers stages of production by shape. Evolutionary changes possibly represent technological improvements. Frequency seriation looks at the gradual changes in the frequencies of ceramic stylistic attributes.

Typology in seriation is the systematic organization of artefacts into types on the basis of their shared attributes. This serial order represents change over time of one form related to another.