Some Experiments in the Numerical Analysis of Archaeological Data

Abstract

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A Review of Classification

“…Single linkage does not give satisfactory results if intermediates are present between clusters (Hodson et al, 1966). Such intermediates can be viewed as the result of random noise, and methods have been proposed for eliminating noisy entities (Wishart, 1969) or noisy variables (Baron and Fraser, 1968).…”

“…If the spatial forms of the characterized data are non-linear, these techniques will produce an acceptable representation in fewer dimensions than required by linear techniques. For examples of their success in extracting non-linear structural forms from multidimensional data, see Hodson et al (1966), Shepard and Carroll (1966). A possible extension to polynomial principal components is introduced by Gnanadesikan and Wilk (1969).…”

The computer in archaeology: A critical survey

“…All of these methods are basically polythetic and agglomerative, as discussed by Williams and Dale (1965). Explorations of the applicability and usefulness of these methods in archaeology began a half-dozen years ago (Hodson, Sneath, and Doran, 1966), and rapidly increasing numbers of such studies and applications have appeared recently in the literature (Hodson, 1969;Bordaz and Bordaz, 1970;True and Matson, 1970;Thomas, 1972). Explorations of the applicability and usefulness of these methods in archaeology began a half-dozen years ago (Hodson, Sneath, and Doran, 1966), and rapidly increasing numbers of such studies and applications have appeared recently in the literature (Hodson, 1969;Bordaz and Bordaz, 1970;True and Matson, 1970;Thomas, 1972).…”

“…Applications of multidimensional scaling procedures also began to appear in the literature a half-dozen years ago (Hodson, Sneath, and Doran, 1966;Doran and Hodson, 1966), but interest has surged only in the last couple of years (e.g., Hodson, 1970;True and Matson, 1970;Ammerman, 1971). The most common direction taken has been to experiment with multidimensional scaling.…”

A Morphological Analysis of Late Prehistoric and Romano-British Settlements in North West Wales

“…The techniques of Numerical Taxonomy have been published in full by Sokal and Sneath (1963), and contour at 1100ft./335m archaeological applications have been discussed by Hodson, Sneath and Doran (1966) and Hodson (1970). One means by which biologists have attempted to overcome them has been by the development of Numerical Taxonomy.…”