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A statistical approach to the display of sets of 14C dates is suggested. All available dates of any particular culture are used to calculate the two quartiles and the median dates for it. The ‘dispersion’of the dates is then displayed as a bar showing the extreme dates, the quartiles and the median; thus neither individual dates nor their standard deviations are shown. This ‘dispersion diagram’saves much space when the dates of several cultures are to be displayed.
The argument is developed that the inter‐quartile range, which does not change very much when new dates become available and are added to the set, is a good index of the time span during which a culture flourished, and this range should normally be quoted rather than the mean, median or extreme dates of the culture. With samples of nine or more it can be shown by the Hypergeometric Distribution that there is a 97% chance of two cultures being different if their inter‐quartile ranges just fail to overlap, so that this method of display is useful in assessing the overlap of cultures. The fact that the dispersion diagram contains within it a measure of the statistical uncertainties of the individual estimates and therefore can replace the standard deviation of each individual 14C date is discussed.
The process of the production of copper and bronze is presented in this paper as a sequential operation. Each stage of this process may in¯uence the ®nal product. The deconstruction of the process is a convenient way of examining each individual stage, using archaeological case studies from different places within the Old World and, where useful, ethnographic studies. The examination will focus on two aspects: innovation and specialization. It seeks to move beyond technological determinism by relating the study of technology to the context of those societies which shaped and practised it and which exercised certain choices in its execution.
Current calibration methods for single and replicate 14C dates are compared. Various forms of tabular and graphic output are discussed. Results from all the methods show reasonable agreement but further methodological development and improvements in computer output are required. Comparison of existing techniques for a series of non-contemporaneous dates showed less agreement amongst participants on this issue. We recommend that calibrated dates should be presented as a combination of graphs and ranges, in preference to mean and standard deviation.
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