Is There a "Pompeii Premise" in Archaeology?

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Abstract
In a recent article in this journal, Binford (1981) called attention to a counterproductive "Pompeii premise" and attributed it to the present author. Drawing on two case studies of house floor assemblages from the Southwestern literature, this paper shows that an insidious Pompeii premise can be found in archaeology, but it is different from the one identified by Binford. The real Pompeii premise is not employed by this author, but by those who fail to evaluate in detail how specific house-floor assemblages were formed by cultural and noncultural processes. To promote more rigorous analyses, this paper summarizes the basic formation processes that affect the composition of house-floor assemblages and provides several provisional measures for assessing de facto refuse.

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