Tools for Quantitative
Archaeology
Tools for Quantitative
Archaeology (TFQA) is a package of 50 PC programs
developed to satisfy several unusual analytical needs of
archaeologists. The focus is on methods developed for archaeology
and not included in general-purpose statistical packages.
While this package can perform many important analyses, it is not
a complete substitute for a general purpose statistical package or
statistical programming language such as R. TFQA was written by Keith Kintigh,
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Arizona State University. It
has been sold to archaeologists in 27 countries and were used in Kintigh's ASU
graduate courses in Quantitative and Formal Methods in Archaeology
and Intrasite Analysis in Archaeology and in similar courses in
other universities.
Tools for Quantitative
Archaeology enable a wide range of analyses including
the following (see Program Descriptions
for more detail):
- k-means
cluster analysis and Koetje's
analysis of cluster homogeneity with respect to an
independent variable
- unconstrained clustering and calculation of contiguity
probabilities
- nearest neighbor analysis
- local density analysis
- accumulation of grid counts
from point provenience data
- random walk and generation
of random and random-contagious point distributions
- calculation of Hodder and Okell's
A
- Kintigh's Monte Carlo Analysis of diversity
- Rarefaction analysis of
diversity
- Boone's analysis of
assemblage diversity
- calculation of a range of diversity
measures including Richness, Simpson's, Shannon's,
Brillouin's, and the Renyi and Delta families of diversity
measures
- continency (two-way) table
analysis including Chi Square and G square tests, Monte
Carlo analysis for small samples, median polish, and
Mosteller's, Haberman's, and Allison's binomial probability
table standardization
- Fisher's Exact Test (from 4
cell counts, including on very large samples)
- Bayesian estimates for
proportions
- drawing of Ford (battleship
curve) diagrams
- calculation of binomial
and Poisson probabilities,
including for large samples
- calculation of a wide range of similarity
and distance measures including Euclidean distance,
Brainerd-Robinson, Jaccard, Gower, and simple matching
coefficients
- sampling error estimates for Brainerd-Robinson
and Euclidean coefficients
- Ward and Wilson's d-split
and Steponaitis' and Kintigh's probabalistic analysis of radiocarbon
dates
- Estimation of true intervals
associated with a set of radiocarbon dates.
- Evaluation of the association between extreme
climate intervals and cultural changes.
- shovel test pit layout
and Monte Carlo analysis of effectiveness
- generation of uniform and
normal (Gaussian) random numbers, selection of random samples,
and column randomization of data
- simplification of 2-dimensional
data entry, e.g., type-form counts by provenience, sorting
and column movement of fixed-format
data
Useful Information
Elmer
Yungotsuna's Katsinas
Page Last Updated: 26 Match 2023
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