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Tools for Quantitative Archaeology

Tools for Quantitative Archaeology (TFQA) is a commercial package of more than 45 PC programs developed to satisfy several unusual analytical needs of archaeologists. The focus of the package 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. TFQA was written by Keith Kintigh, Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University. It has been sold to archaeologists in 27 countries and is 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.

• Overview of Programs
• Ordering Information
• What's New
• Installation Instructions
• Running Programs and Printing Graphics Under Windows
• Programs using CSV Format Data to Interface with Excel and Other Programs
• Bugs and Fixes
• Overcoming Vista Incompatibilities

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
• 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 probabilitstic analysis of radiocarbon dates
• 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

• Notes on Quantatitive Analysis and Writing in Archaeology  SAA Archaeological Record 5(4):33-35 (Sept. 2005; pdf)
    Kintigh: Writing Archaeology: Analyses and Archaeological Argumentation
    Cowgill: Things to Remember About Statistics - (Whatever Else You Forget)
• Doing Correspondence Analysis in Systat
• Notes on Trench Sampling (pdf comment on a manuscript by Glen Rice and Fred Plog)
• MS Word Filter for HPGL files. (Link to Microsoft Site)
• Kintigh's 1990 Review Article on Spatial Analysis (pdf 1.5MB)

Page Last Updated - 11-Oct-2008