This book is for students and practitioners of archaeology. It offers an introductory survey of all the applications of mathematical and statistical techniques to their work. These applications are increasingly concerned with computerized data classification and quantification, and their effect is to reduce the level of uncertainty in the interpretation of the evidence that time and chance have left. Any archaeologist wanting to find out what these new methods have to offer has hitherto been forced to search for information in the specialist handbooks, conference proceedings, and review articles of his own, and very often of other, disciplines. This book brings the information conveniently together, so far as it pertains to archaeology, and permits an assessment of its relevance and quality. Those who have been daunted by the specialist knowledge apparently demanded will now be able to acquire a thorough grasp of principles and practices. Only an elementary knowledge of mathematics is presumed throughout. Part 1 provides a brief introduction to basic concepts in archaeology and mathematics. Part 2 relates the standard archaeological techniques and procedures to mathematics; it concentrates on numerical approaches best suited to archaeological practices. Part 3 examines various automatic seriation techniques and discusses further work that is coming to play an essential part in the development of archaeology.

The value for archaeology of some available methods of numerical classification was investigated. Brooches from an Iron Age site in Switzerland (Münsingen) were chosen for analysis for two reasons: they show variation over a typically wide range of attributes, and their archaeological context, in rich associations in a horizontally stratified cemetery, provides independent evidence to check the significance of any proposed classifications. A further control on results was provided by an ‘intuitive’ classification of the brooches by professional archaeologists. The brooches were described numerically by quantitative and qualitative characters, and a similarity coefficient was computed between each pair. These coefficients were then submitted to two forms of cluster analysis (single- and average-link) and to a multi-dimensional scaling procedure. The average-link, but not the single-link, cluster analysis and the multi-dimemional scaling procedure were found to produce classifications of demonstrable archaeological significance.