For all my fellow budding archaeologsts..

[Blue Mythril]

What do you think of chronology and site context? For me, this seems such a bitch of an issue. Everyone likes to base their chronology on the artefacts of everybody else (like basing near eastern pottery on its correlation with Mycenean, who are in turn using near eastern dates as a reference).

So, opinions on the nature of sites, what artefacts are good (or not) to use in chronology, should we even bother with chronology?

[I, Brian]

Chronology can only be a guide - but, typically, the human animal likes absolutes. That means sometimes people look to use chornology as an absolute reference, when it's best used only as a guide.

The closer you look at any ancient period and the more likely you'll find a whole load of debates regarding chronology. After all, no one's been using the Gregorian Calendar for more than a couple of hundred years, and comparative dating of regions can become very messy.

David Rohl has also made some pretty interesting arguments for the revision of Egyptian.

[Esioul]

Well, I suppose typology can be some use- for example with styles of pottery.