Herzog's "Stratify" shareware is available at
http://www.stratify.privat.t-online.de/ -- we've found it very useful
here at el Presidio de San Francisco, and are currently using it on a
project that combines stratigraphic data from traditional excavation and
from investigations of a standing structure. We went with "Stratify"
because it has you enter stratigraphic relationships into a database,
and then generates a matrix based on actual mathematical relationships
(<, >, =), as opposed to most programs where the user simply draws a
matrix. In the latter scenario, there is more room for incorrectness in
the matrix, and also the matrix is cumbersome to change and update in
order to reflect ongoing investigations and/or new discoveries. 

aloha
~liz

Liz Clevenger
Archaeological Collections Specialist
The Presidio Trust
415-561-5086
[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
geoff carver
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2005 1:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: stratigraphy/documentation

i've used the archEd program; it's a good one (the munsell one is also
handy)
irmela herzog also has a new matrix program called "stratify"; i don't
have the URL offhand (& haven't had a chance to use the program yet
either) but you can google her -
one of the arguments i've heard over the years about why the matrix
isn't used more in the americas is the lack of stratified sites
but john triggs has written on its use at fort york in toronto, and it
has been used at williamsburg, so the fact that it has more application
in large historical or native village sites than temporary
non-stratified flint scatters or the like probably plays a lot into it
the usual number i've heard being batted around is that it isn't worth
while computerising if you're working with fewer than about 500
contexts/layers
i second the opinion about field training - i've also been going thru
whatever i can get about stratigraphy from the basic introductory texts
they fed us when we first went in (& let's face it: did we ever really
think much about it since then? introductory 101 is about all there is)
& noting how wrong most of these texts are: missing out on
post-depositional transformations, soil formation processes, etc.
what first got me going was the difference between the terminology i was
using with the geomorphologists & what i was saying to other
archaeologists; some of the german archaeologists i was working with had
never heard of silt ("Schluff") -
then to think about the german tendency to use pencil crayons for
naturalistic shading of field drawings, versus the british tendency to
use colours to code finds (green for bronze, black for charcoal, etc.) &
different forms of hatching for composition/texture
which got me thinking that, if one group is documenting colour & the
other soil composition, aren't they documenting different things...?
which would sort of imply different assemblages if colour & composition
did not necessarily correspond...?

"Boyer, Jeffrey, DCA" <[log in to unmask]> schrieb:
> www.ads.tuwien.ac.at/ArchEd/ provides free downloadable software to
create (and color) a Harris Matrix.  I have never used a Harris