2509
Accession Number
329
Title Of Article Chaper
An archaeological inference problem
Title Of Journal Book
JASA: Journal of the American Statistical Association
Volume
83
Pages
588-595
Collation
figs., tables
Reference Bibliography
refs.
ISSN
0162-1459
Language Of Text
English
Literature Type
Serial
Literature Level
Analytic
Abstract
The problem is that of radiocarbon dating, and 65 dates from Danebury were involved. The analysis is based on a data-generating model, which takes careful account of the various kinds of uncertainty involved in relating observed radiocarbon dates for artifacts to successive chronological beginning and ending dates of significant archaeological phases. In addition to its intrinsic interest as a possible model for many kinds of archaeological data of this type, the model poses some challenging inference problems. Maximum likelihood techniques do not seem adequate to the task, and a Bayesian approach has been adopted.
Keywords
radiocarbon dating;computers;modeling; Bayesian statistical decision theory;data processing;archaeology
pub_id
2509