Statistics for Archaeologists (eBook)

This book is intended as an introduction to basic statistical principles and techniques for the archaeologist. It grows primarily from my experience in teaching courses in quantitative analysis for undergraduate and graduate stu- dents in archaeology over a number of years. The book is set specifically in the context of archaeology, not because the issues dealt with are uniquely archaeological in nature, but because many people find it much easier to understand quantitative analysis in a familiar context-one in which they can readily understand the nature of the data and the utility of the tech- niques. The principles and techniques, however, are all of much broader applicability. Physical anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, and speCialists in other fields make use of these same principles and techniques. The particular mix of topics, the rela- tive emphasis given them, and the exact approach taken here, however, do reflect my own view of what is most useful in the analysis of specifically archaeological data. It is impossible to fail to notice that many aspects of archaeological information are numerical and that archaeological analysis has an unavoid- ably quantitative component. Standard statistical approaches are commonly applied in straightforward as well as unusual and ingenious ways to archae- ological problems, and new approaches have been invented to cope with the speCial qUirks of archaeological analysis. The literature on quantitative analy- sis in archaeology has grown to prodigious size in the past 25 or 30 years.