This course is meant as an introduction to basic quantitative methods in anthropology. In the last 30 years, quantitative methods have taken on an increasingly important role in anthropology, especially in evaluations of field research. This course should enable you to employ standard quantitative methods in your own research and understand the numerous writings in which such methods are used.

Some of what we are going to cover is part of standard "Intro to Statistics" courses for social sciences. However, by taking examples from anthropology, it will become more evident why certain techniques are useful. Only the most basic skills of high school mathematics are required.Whenever you feel that the course goes too fast, you should immediately discuss this with us so that we can adjust to your needs.

For those who take the course for credit, weekly assignments are required. For those who sit in, it is advisable to do the assignments as well, so that you can keep up with the material we cover: statistics are best understood through employing what you have read and what was discussed in class. Assignments should not just consist of a graph or a sheet with numbers, but should always be accompanied by a text that explains why you did what you did and how you interpret your results.

Two books contain most of the core readings:
Madrigal, Lorena
1999 Statistics for Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Shennan, Stephen
1997 Quantifying Archaeology. 2nd edition. University of Iowa Press, Iowa.

In addition to these books, there are required readings from journals or book chapters that present case studies in anthropology. Some of these are "classic" articles from earlier in the century which demonstrate the long involvement by anthropology in quantitative studies. In addition, it is always good to have a general introduction to statistics at hand. You will also need a calculator. We will be using SPSS in the computer lab for various assignments. We will introduce you to this software at the appropriate point in time.

COURSE SCHEDULE

WEEK 1 September 3
Introduction; Nominal, Ordinal and Interval Scales; Stem- and Leaf-Plots; Histograms

Required Readings:
Madrigal, Chapters 1 and 2
Shennan, Chapter 3

Thomas, David Hurst
1978 The Awful Truth About Statistics in Archaeology. American Antiquity 43:231-244.

WEEK 2 September 10
Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA)
Qualitative Analysis; Survey Instruments
Resistant Statistics; Median, lower and upper hinges, midspread, Tukey-line, Running Medians

Required Readings:
Drennan, Robert
1996 Statistics for Archaeologists: A Commonsense Approach. New York, Plenum.
Chapters 3 and 4.

Hartwig, Frederick and Brian E. Dearing
1979 Exploratory Data Analysis. Beverly Hills: SAGE.

Further Readings:
Wallgren, Anders, Britt Walgren, Rolf Persson, Ulf Jorner, and Jan-Aage Haaland
1996 Graphing Statistics & Data. Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

WEEK 3 September 17
Measures of centrality and dispersion; standardization and z-scores; skewed distributions and transformations.

Required Readings:
Madrigal, Chapter 3
Shennan, Chapter 8.

DeBoer, Warren R.
1993 Like a Rolling Stone: The Chunkey Game and Political Organization in Eastern North America. Southeast Archaeology 12:83-92.

Eerkens, J.W.
2000 Practice Makes Within 5% of Perfect: Visual Perception, Motor Skills, and Memory in Artifact Variation. Current Anthropology 41 (4): 663-668.

Kimball Romney, A.
1999 Culture Consensus as a Statistical Model. Current Anthropology 40, Suppl: S103-S115

Further Reading:
Rummel, R.J.
1970 Applied Factor Analysis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Chapter 11 (deals with transformations).

WEEK 4 September 24
Populations and Samples

Required Readings:
Madrigal, Chapter 4

Orton, Clive
1998 Sampling in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read Chapter 1 (pp. 1-14) and 3 (pp. 40-66).

Thomas, David Hurst
1986 Refiguring Anthropology. Prospect Heights, Il.: Waveland.
Chapter 15, "Sampling Problems in Anthropology"

WEEK 5 October 1
Regression and Least Squares Method; Correlation

Required Readings:
Shennan, Chapter 9
Madrigal, Chapters 9 and 10

Krogman, Wilton Marion
1976 The Human Skeleton in Forensic Medicine. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Chapter 6: "The Calculation of Stature from Long Bones"

Crognier, E.
1996 Behavioral and Environmental Determinants of Reproductive Success in Traditional Moroccan Berber Groups. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100:181-190.

Further Reading:
Campbell, S.K.
1974 Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking. Read Chapter 13: Relationships: Causal and Casual, pp. 152-177. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

WEEK 6 October 8
Hypothesis Testing; t-Test; Chi-square and elementary categorical data

Required Readings:
Madrigal, Chapters 5, 6, and 11
Shennan, Chapter 6

Cowgill, George L.
1982 The Trouble With Significance Tests and What We Can Do About It. American Antiquity 42:350-368.

Further Reading:
Majone, G. and P.R. Sandy
1971 On the Numerical Classification of Nominal Data. In Paul Kay, ed.: Explorations in Mathematical Anthropology, pp. 226-241. Cambridge: MIT Press.

WEEK 7 October 15
Category Data and Ordinal Data
Hypothesis Testing I: Kolmogorov Smirnov
Hypothesis Testing II: Spearman's Rho

Required Readings:
Shennan, Chapter 5
Madrigal, Chapter 8

Thomas, David Hurst
1986 Refiguring Anthropology. Prospect Heights, Il.: Waveland.
Chapters 11 and 12, nonparametric statistics for nominal and ordinal data

Further Reading:
Kerrich, J. E. and D. L. Clarke
1968 Notes on the Possible Misuse And Errors of Cumulative Percentage Frequency Graphs for the Comparison of Prehistoric Artifact Assemblages. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 33:57-69.

WEEK 8 October 22
Residuals; Analysis of Variance

Required Readings:
Madrigal, Chapter 7
Shennan, Chapter 10

Sinopoli, Carla M.
1988 The Organization of Craft Production at Vijayanagara, South India. American Anthropologist 90:580-597.

Hardy, Vernon C. and Dennis P. Van Gerven
1976 The Effect of Size Variation on Univariate Assessments of Morphological Difference in Human Crania. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 44:79-82.

WEEK 9 October 29
Seriation

Required Readings:
Shennan, pp. 191-212

Kroeber, A. L.
1919 On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes of Fashion. American Anthropologist 21

Bentley, R. Alexander and Stephen J. Shennan
2003 Cultural Transmission and Stochastic Network Growth. American Antiquity 68 (3): 459-486.

Further Reading:
Marquardt, William H.
1978 Advances in Archaeological Seriation. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 1, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 266-314. Academic Press, New York.

WEEK 10 November 5
Typology

Required Readings:
Shennan, Chapter 7

Christenson, Andrew L. and Dwight W. Read
1977 Numerical taxonomy, R-mode factor analysis, and archaeological
classification. American Antiquity 42:163-179.

Spaulding, Albert C.
1982 Structure in Archaeological Data: Nominal Variables. In Essays on Archaeological Typology, edited by Robert Whallon and James A. Brown, pp. 1-20. Center for American Archaeology Press, Evanston.

Whallon, Robert
1982 Variables and dimensions: the critical step in quantitative typology. In Essays on Archaeological Typology, edited by Robert Whallon and James A. Brown, pp. 127-161. Center for American Archaeology Press, Evanston.

Further Reading:
Clark, G. A.
1976 More on contingency table analysis, decision making criteria, and the use of log linear models. American Antiquity 41:259-273.

Read, Dwight W.
1974 Some comment on typologies in archaeology and an outline of a method. American Antiquity 39:216-242.

WEEK 11 November 12

Spatial Analysis: Regional Sampling, Dimensional Analysis of Variance; Nearest Neighbor Analysis

Required Readings:
Nance, Jack D.
1983 Regional sampling in archaeological survey: the statistical perspective. In Advances in archaeological method and theory 6, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 289-356. Academic Press, New York.

Orton, Clive
1998 Sampling in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read pp. 67-111.

Whallon, Robert Jr.
1973 Spatial analysis of occupation floors I: application of dimensional
analysis of variance. American Antiquity 38:266-278.

Whallon, Robert Jr.
1974 Spatial analysis of occupation floors II: the application of nearest neighbor analysis. American Antiquity 39:16-34.

Further Readings:
Plog, Stephen
1976 Relative Efficiencies of Sampling Techniques for Archaeological Surveys. In The early Mesoamerican village, edited by Kent V. Flannery, pp. 136-158. Academic Press, New York.

Dacey, M. F.
1973 Statistical Tests of Spatial Association in the Locations of Tool Types. American Antiquity 38:320-328.

Stark, Barbara L. and Dennis L. Young
1981 Linear nearest neighbor analysis. American Antiquity 46:284-300.

Pinder, David, Izumi Shimada and David Gregory
1979 The nearest neighbor statistic: archaeological applications and new developments. American Antiquity 44:430-445.

WEEK 12 November 19
Principal Components Analysis; Factor Analysis

Required Readings:
Shennan, pp. 269-305

Binford, Lewis R. and Sally R.
1966 A Preliminary Analysis of Functional Variability in the Mousterian of Levallois Facies. American Anthropologist 68, 2 (Part 2):238-295.

MacEachern, S.
2000 Genes, Tribes, and African History. Current Anthropology 41 (3):357-384.

D'Andre, Roy and Phillip A. Morin
1996 Chimpanzee and Human Mitochondrial DNA. American Anthropologist 98:352-370.

WEEK 13 November 26
Principles of Multivariate Analysis, Cluster Analysis

Required Readings:
Shennan, Chapter 13

Baxter, M. J.
1994 Cluster Analysis - The Main Ideas. In Exploratory Multivariate Analysis in Archaeology. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Read, Dwight W.
1982 Toward a Theory of Archaeological Classification. In Essays on Archaeological Typology, edited by Robert Whallon and James A. Brown, pp. 56-92. Evanston, Il.: Center for American Archaeology Press.

WEEK 14 December 3
Diversity Studies

Bobrowsky, Peter T., and Bruce F. Ball
1989 The Theory and Mechanics of Ecological Diversity in Archaeology. In Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology, edited by R. D. Leonard and G. T. Jones, pp. 4-12. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Jones, George T., Charlotte Beck, and Donald K. Grayson
1989 Measures of Diversity and Expedient Lithic Technologies. In Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology, edited by R. D. Leonard and G. T. Jones, pp. 69-78. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Shott, Michael J.
1989 Diversity, Organization, and Behavior in the Material Record: Ethnographic and Archaeological Examples. Current Anthropology 30 (3): 283-316.

WEEK 15 December 10
Discussion/Some closing thoughts on morphometrics and other issues of interest

Corruccini, Robert S.
1978 Morphometric Analysis: Uses and Abuses. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 21:134-150.

Lynch, J. Walter and Richard J. Hathaway
1994 Projectile Point Morphology: A Note on the Golden Section. Journal of Quantitative Anthropology 4:211-220.