Hello Charles,

I moved your query to the discussion board as it fits here as well as anywhere else, and may likely receive more notice in this forum.

Cheers,
Richard

Digging Numbers: Elementary Statistics for Archaeologists (Oxford University School of Archaeology Monographs)
By Mike Fletcher, Gary R. Lock

that should also have a good biblio.

Quantifying Archaeology by Stephen Shennan and Statistics for Archaeologists: A Commonsense Approach by Robert D. Drennan are the two books I used in my graduate quanitification class.

Its been a long time - but back in the day we used David Hurst Thomas' "Refiguring Anthropology". I don't consider myself a big stats person, so I have no idea how it has held up over the years (published in 1986) but Waveland Press still has it for sale on their website - http://www.waveland.com/Titles/Thomas-RA.htm

Good Luck
DM

I would be careful though as 82.3% of statistics are false...

:lol:



could not resist... ah the old ones are the best!

Good on you for using that math looking stuff. It's always been a dream of mine to be able to do that. Usually the resources I work with have like one arrowhead or six flakes. Wow. Imagine a collection where 100% is projectile point [singular form used intentionally for effect].

I found over the years that people often mistake natural things for cultural things and include them as cultural in the record. For example, we have several sedimentary conglomerate formations here composed, in large part, of rounded cobble-sized clasts. The same material is used for handstones (manos) in the milling implement tool kit. Some folks think any rounded cobble-sized clast is a mano and have happily recorded numerous manos at exposures of the formations mentioned above.

My point? Be cautious of the source data. Statistics allow us to view large amounts of data in condensed ways and that have a likelihood of supporting or refuting our hypotheses. But it falls apart if the fundamental details are not correct. Aristotle promoted defining terms before engaging in argument. In my example above the terms for defining manos were never agreed on and therefore any statistical examination of the distribution of manos in this county will be worthless at best because some nimnod didn't pay attention in logic class.

But hey, have fun stormin' the castle. At least you'll get to look at a pile of data and if yer lucky, n=>6.
ROC

I am awful with statistics. I have had the same class about five times and each time it's completely new. I like them, they are incredibly important, but something about statical methods sends them straight to my short-term memory. So I have a collection of well-thumbed references.

I haven't read Drennan, but I have heard it's very good. I can recommend Shennan very highly. The Banning book isn't so good for background on the methods, but has a sort of cookbook chapter of statistical methods (when to use what).

Banning, E.B.
2000 The archaeologist's laboratory: the analysis of archaeological data. Kluwer Academic/Plenum, New York.

Drennan, Robert
1996 Statistics for Archaeologists: A Commonsense Approach. Plenum Press, New York.

Shennan, Stephen
1988 Quantifying archaeology. Academic Press, New York.