The Statistical Use of Artifact Distributions to Establish Chronological Sequence

Abstract

This paper describes and demonstrates an improved statistical method for determining chronological sequences among archaeological sites. The method, derived from a system of measurement called contextual analysis, depends on the pattern of artifact types present and absent at each site rather than on the relative frequency of occurrence of types. The process of contextual analysis is presented in sufficient detail to provide a guide for other studies.For purposes of demonstration, the chronology of 16 central California burial sites, originally analyzed by Heizer, Fenenga, Lillard and others, and subsequently re-examined by Belous, was again reworked. The results showed an extremely high measure of agreement with Heizer's chronology, a rank order correlation coefficient of .96 being obtained. This high agreement is taken as evidence not only that a purely statistical method of establishing dependable sequences is possible, but also that contextual analysis is a sufficiently sensitive technique to solve the archaeological problem.

Dimensionality of the repression sensitization scale

“…The value obtained for RD, the Coefficient of Dimensionality, suggests that the R-S Scale is psychometrically unifactorial based on the criteria suggested by the authors (Dempsey & Baumhoff, 1963). It compares well with those RlMPI scales that were consensually agreed to be most unifactorial: Hy and Hs had R D values of .92 and .91, respectively.…”

Two Issues in Archaeological Phylogenetics: Taxon Construction and Outgroup Selection

“…The kind of seriation we used in the outgroup determination is occurrence seriation, which orders phenomena on the basis of presence/ absence of characters or character states (Dempsey & Baumhoff, 1963;Rowe, 1959). The phenomena to be seriated can be sets of things or individual things; ''characters'' as used here can refer to any kind of trait being used to order the phenomena.…”

Solving a family of permutation problems on 0-1 matrices

“…. ., i Vft of A. and suppose that at a given node of the search tree, the following arcs have been fixed at 1: (4,8), (8,1), (1,11), (11,6), (3,7), (7,10), (10,5). To these, correspond the two paths (4, 8,1,11,6) and (3, 7,10,5) and the two submatrices The values of z SP (B h ) and z TSP (B h ) are then computed: z SP (B 1 ) = 13, = 7, z TSP (B 2 ) = 4.…”