well... the archaeologists base their use of stratigraphy on smith, smith
uses the analogy of the antiquaries, so... archaeologists are modelling
their stratigraphic arguments/theory on something they've already been
doing...
which seems like a circular means of self-justification to me...
ultimately, the problem seems to be that we don't have any real authority
for the claim that "all artifacts within a given strata are roughly
contemporary" since it doesn't really derive either from smith or steno (who
also gets cited quite often), and early archaeological history is so closely
tied with cases where disturbance was studied closely...
i also avoided the problem of defining what/who antiquaries were: evans was
still talking about how "antiquaries" should be interested in brixham as
late as 1863, while the "archaeological journal" had been published since
the 1840s... all very murky...
----- Original Message -----
>
> I'm not sure that I agree with your characterization that the use of
> stratigraphy by Smith is a case of "circular reasoning".