The Archeological Hypothesis is a poetic narrative concerning someone's character, originating in The Child of Billon. The rules of the form are applied by poets to produce individual poems which can be recited. The poem is a single couplet. Use of simile is characteristic of the form. Each line has ten syllables. The second line of the couplet shares the underlying meaning of the first line. The first line is intended to make an assertion. The second line is intended to undercut the previous assertion.