In Part II we talked in somewhat theoretical terms about how type concepts are formulated and communicated. In this chapter we return to the same issues from a more pragmatic perspective, and with reference especially to the relationship between types and attributes.

Discussion in the last two chapters might suggest that typology-making involves a simple and logical progression from the specification of purpose to the selection of attributes to the formulation of types on the basis of selected attributes. This is indeed the procedure recommended in many programmatic statements (Dunnell 1971b: 70–6; Spaulding 1982). Real-life typologies, however, are seldom made entirely in this way or in any single and simple way. The relationship between attributes and types is, in most typologies, a complex and multi-dimensional one.

As we saw in Chapter 5, the formulation and use of type concepts involves a number of successive stages, or processes. Processes that will concern us in the present chapter are those of formulation, definition, designation, and description. We will see that the relationship between attributes and types is somewhat different in each of the four cases, obliging us to make a distinction between diagnostic (prescriptive) and descriptive attributes. In anticipation of the discussion we may say that attributes are prescriptive of types at one level of analysis, and descriptive at another (cf. Whallon and Brown 1982: xvi).