Determining Provenance from Compositional Data (Elements in Current Archaeological Tools and Techniques) - Softcover

López-García, Pedro A.; Argote, Denisse L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009634178 ISBN 13: 9781009634175

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2026

Synopsis

Traditionally, classical multivariate statistical methods have been applied to relate cultural materials recovered at archaeological sites to their respective raw material sources. However, when reviewing published research, which usually claims to have reached a high degree of confidence in the assignment of materials, the authors have detected that those applying these methods can make serious errors that compromise the inferences made. This Element reconsiders the use of statistical methods to address the problem of provenance analysis of archaeological materials using a step-by-step procedure that allows the recognition of natural groups in the data, thus obtaining better quality classifications while avoiding the problems of total or partial overlaps in the chemical groups (common in biplots). To evaluate the methods proposed here, the challenge of group search in ceramic materials is addressed using algorithms derived from model-based clustering. For cases with partial data labeling, a semi-supervised algorithm is applied to obsidian samples.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009634178
• ISBN 13: 9781009634175
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 86