The stability of ionogram analysis techniques

Ionograms commonly contain discontinuities or cusps in the virtual-height trace. These produce spurious oscillations in the calculated real heights, when second or higher order analysis techniques are used. The magnitude of this effect is studied using basic discontinuities and model ionograms. Parabolic-lamination methods of analysis give the largest oscillations in all cases. A fourth-order overlapping-polynormal analysis gives oscillations (at or between the scaled frequencies) which are 0.4–0.8 times those given by the parabolic analysis. With higher order least-squares polynomials the oscillations are 0.1–0.5 times the parabolic results. The practice of scaling at a cusp frequency, and permitting a gradient discontinuity at that point, is generally not recommended. It has little effect on the amplitude of spurious oscillations, and appreciably increases real-height errors above the cusp. Model calculations give greatest accuracy and smallest oscillations with a continuous analysis in which the cusp frequency is not scaled. An overlapping-cubic analysis is described which completely eliminates spurious oscillations, gives the smallest errors in the cusp region, and has an accuracy similar to the use of parabolic laminations at other points.     

VAULTED CONSTRUCTION IN FRENCH MEGALITHIC TOMBS

Summary. The passage graves of France now have a serious claim to be the earliest known corbelled vaults. The structural mechanics of these buildings is investigated through an analysis of the vaults at Barnenez and Ile Carn, the only examples surviving complete. The cultural setting of the French passage graves and their typology are briefly reviewed. Chambers G, G'and F of the great mound at Barnenez and the central chamber of Ile Carn are described with reference to the materials used and their construction. The theory underlying our analysis of corbelling is introduced and the results of the analysis summarised. All three of the chambers at Barnenez are found to follow the same formula, indicating the same technique was used over the different phases of construction. Ile Carn, however, is vaulted in a completely different manner. These findings are placed in the broader context of the development of megalithic architecture.     

The Linkage of Data Describing Overlapping Geographical Units

Abstract

This article examines advanced ages at death in a historical population in northern Sweden between 1780 and 1900. The source material used is a set of data files from the Demographic Data Base at Umeå University supplemented with the search tool Indiko. The belief that the Sami died at very old ages was tested, and life tables and values of remaining life expectancies at older ages were calculated. The information of the age at death was analysed using a model containing four levels of certainty. The analysis reveals that the Sami did not live to extreme ages. The analysis also reveals large differences between the parishes concerning extreme longevity and correctness of age at death.     

The role of relative function ceramic typologies in Bronze Age settlement analysis

Summary: Given the importance of the site of Myrtos to the definition of village living patterns in the Early Minoan period, and the current state of disagreement as to the nature of the social system actually in place at Myrtos, a new investigation into the matter is warranted. In order to carry out that investigation, the possibility of constructing and utilizing a typology of relative function from the available ceramics is examined, and the results applied to an analysis of the living pattern at the site, along with a review of prior attempts at artifact-distribution and architectural-design analysis. It is suggested that the social pattern and population level at Myrtos during the EM II period was closer to Warren's original communal model than more recent theories of independent nuclear families, as there is clear evidence for an intra-site communal storage and distribution pattern.     

Sequential Incisions on a Cave Bear Bone from the Middle Paleolithic of Pešturina Cave,Serbia

We present the detailed analysis of a cervical vertebra from a cave bear, found at Pe?turina cave, Serbia, in a Mousterian archaeological level dated by radiocarbon at 43.5–44.6 kyr cal BP, and by ESR to between 93.5 and 102.5 kyr BP. Identified as a portion of the cranial articular facet, the fragment displays ten subparallel grooves. The microscopic study of these grooves and other surface modification present on the bone fragment, conducted with multifocus optical and confocal microscopes and complemented by a taphonomic analysis of the associated faunal assemblage, supports the hypothesis that the incisions were made by humans. Results are used to critically examine ambiguities implicit in the analysis and interpretation of early engravings, a category of material culture that has been playing a key role in the identification of early instances of symbolically mediated behavior.     

The Local Implications of Major Job Transformations in the City: A Spatial Microsimulation Approach

The changing dynamics of regional and local labor markets during the last decades have led to an increasing labor market segmentation and socioeconomic polarization and to a rise of income inequalities at the regional, urban, and intraurban level. These problems call for effective social and local labor market policies. However, there is also a growing need for methods and techniques capable of efficiently estimating the likely impact of social and economic change at the local level. For example, the common methodologies for estimating the impacts of large firm openings or closures operate at the regional level. The best of these models disaggregate the region to the city (Armstrong 1993; Batey and Madden 1983). This paper demonstrates how spatial microsimulation modeling techniques can be used for local labor market analysis and policy evaluation to assess these impacts (and their multiplier effects) at the local level‐to measure the effects on individuals and their neighborhood services. First, we review these traditional macroscale and mesoscale regional modeling approaches to urban and regional policy analysis and we illustrate their merits and limitations. Then, we examine the potential of spatial microsimulation modeling to create a new framework for the formulation, analysis and evaluation of social and local labor market policies at the individual or household level. Outputs from a local labor market microsimulation model for Leeds are presented. We show how first it is possible to investigate the interdependencies between individual's or households labor market attributes at the microscale and to model their accessibilities to job opportunities in different localities. From this base we show how detailed what‐if microspatial analysis can be performed to estimate the impact of major changes in the local labor market through job losses or gains, including local multiplier effects.     

WHAT I BELIEVE: STRUCTURE AND THE PROBLEM OF MACROSOCIALITY

The recent turn in archaeology and other social sciences to the microscale analysis of agency, personhood, and identity has led to a neglect of analysis at the macroscale. With older frameworks such as neoevolution discredited or rejected, there has been relatively little emphasis on patterns of social change at larger geographical and temporal scales. Proceeding from the work of sociologist William Sewell Jr., I suggest that a focus on structures, events, and processes offers Southeastern archaeology a useful and theoretically flexible perspective on such patterns of incremental and exponential social change.     

Spatially Disaggregated Modelling of Voting Outcomes and Socio‐Economic Characteristics at the 2001 Australian Federal Election

This study uses GIS and spatial modelling to relate voting outcomes at the 2001 federal election for polling booths across Australia with the socio‐economic characteristics of polling booth catchment areas. The data and analysis used are more detailed and comprehensive than previous studies. It is conducted at a fine level of spatial disaggregation across the whole nation to examine voting outcomes for both major and minor political parties. Because the aim of the paper is to distinguish voting outcomes between political parties rather than to predict voting outcomes for particular political parties, a discriminant analysis is used rather than regression analysis. The statistical discriminant analysis identifies two main socio‐economic dimensions that are able to predict polling booth outcomes with a relatively high degree of accuracy. That analysis shows how, at the 2001 federal election, the middle ground, in terms of socio‐economic characteristics, was being claimed by the Liberal Party, Country Liberal Party, The Greens, and, to a lesser extent, by the Australian Labor Party. However, the Australian Democrats, National Party and One Nation had more distinctive constituencies, with the National Party and One Nation Party competing for areas with similar socio‐economic characteristics. Using GIS mapping tools, examples of actual and predicted polling booth voting outcomes are given, along with selected socio‐economic characteristics of booth catchments.     

Essai de typologie des centres de santé et de services sociaux au Québec

Given the importance of contextual factors—physical, social and institutional environments—for understanding health landscapes, this article examines the situation in the province of Québec and suggests a spatial typology at the scale of the health and social services centres (CSSS). These CSSS provide services for 95 areas which are the finest territorial delineation in terms of health policies since a reform instituted in 2003. While delivery of primary health and social services is defined at this local scale, overall health policy is decided at the provincial scale. The challenge for stakeholders is to supplement their local knowledge with that of the broader context. In this article, we use principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis to identify eight profiles of CSSS. The final results of the cluster analysis demonstrate that two‐thirds of the health and social services centres correspond with two marginally differentiated profiles and the remaining third shows specificities that are highly spatially anchored.     

ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF HOUSING TRAIT PRICES IN A THIRD WORLD CITY*

ABSTRACT. A first step in the process of economic analysis of housing markets in Third World cities is the econometric analysis of housing trait prices. The information on market price of housing is basic to the derivation/estimation of other market parameters such as housing demand and supply elasticities. In addition, housing trait prices constitute invaluable inputs into the analysis of effects of government housing programs. This paper presents estimates of housing trait prices in a Third World city housing market, the city of Jos in Nigeria. Nonlinear stochastic specification of a policy constrained hedonic price function is presented as an unbiased estimator of housing trait prices. The Box-Cox statistical procedure was employed in the paper to obtain hedonic regression coefficients which are the parameters needed to compute the average prices evaluated both at the mean of each trait and at their margins. The potential uses of housing trait prices for policy analysis are discussed briefly.     

论聚落考古中的空间分析方法

空间分析在聚落考古研究中占有重要地位。从单座房屋,到整个遗址,再到由若干遗址组成的区域,空间分布和与此相关联的空间分析能够提供同一时间维度上当时人们共同体的聚落结构、社会关系和组织形态的信息。同样,依据这些信息还可以进行不同时间维度社会和文化变迁的研究。因而,空间分析为我们提供了认识古代社会一种方法。     

Paleochannel Studies in Archaeology: The Case of The Vychegda River,Northeastern European Russia

Geological and geomorphological settings are often taken into account when choosing strategy in archaeological studies. In the Vychegda River valley (Archangelsk Province, Komi Republic), at the end of the Late Pleistocene and in the Holocene, lateral channel migrations were the dominant process of riverine landscape changes and hence directly influenced human occupation of the valley. Therefore, to assess the physical settings of archaeological sites we employed paleochannel analysis, a geomorphological technique aimed at reconstructing river channel transformations in the historical and geological past. The potential application of paleochannel analysis in archaeology includes designing archaeological surveys and predicting destructive river actions at archaeological sites located in river valleys.     

Biological Kinship,Postmarital Residence and the Emergence of Cemetery Formalisation at Prehistoric Marathon

This paper examines the role of kinship and postmarital residence in the emergence of organised cemeteries during the transition from the Final Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age at Marathon, Attica. Focusing on the cemetery of Tsepi, we performed intra‐cemetery biodistance analysis to test whether biological relatedness structured spatial organisation of tombs, and whether postmarital residence was matrilocal or patrilocal. Dental metric, dental morphological and cranial non‐metric data were collected from 293 individuals and subjected to multivariate analysis (principal component analysis, Euclidean distance ordination via multidimensional scaling), binomial probability calculations, Ripley's K analysis and determinant ratio analysis. Results indicated phenotypic similarity among some tomb co‐interments; however, outliers suggested that within‐tomb burial depended on a variety of factors that could include affinal, fictive or practical kinship. There was strong evidence for phenotypic patterning by tomb row, indicating that cemetery structure at Tsepi was organised according to biological lineages. This was especially evident for females. Male phenotypic variation was higher than that of females, though not significantly so. The results of intra‐cemetery biodistance analysis at Tsepi reveal a complex mortuary programme that emphasised biological kinship within an exogamous and likely matrilocal system of mate exchange. When considered in light of ethnographic evidence, the practice of male exogamy may correlate with the coastal location of the community and the maritime activities that structured the economy during the emergence of social complexity in the region. This paper illustrates the potential of biodistance analyses for elucidating aspects of social life in the Aegean. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

REVIEW ARTICLE USE-WEAR ANALYSIS: THE STATE OF THE ART

This paper is a review of the recent developments in use-wear analysis. The focus is on some key issues: polish formation, quantification of use-wear, residue analysis and the way these related themes have affected methods of use-wear analysis. A brief history of the development of use-wear analysis is presented and a discussion of blind tests, expert systems (explained at length in the ‘Appendix’) and how use-wear analysis can be incorporated into the chaîne opératoire approach to the interpretation of Stone Age sites.     

Identifying domestic functional areas. Chemical analysis of floor sediments at the Classical-Hellenistic settlement at Düzen Tepe (SW Turkey)

For over a decade, multi-element chemical analysis of floor sediments in archaeological contexts has been a tool to identify and interpret anthropogenic chemical residues and activities. For the current study, a multi-element chemical analysis was applied to floor samples from a Classical-Hellenistic courtyard building at Düzen Tepe (SW Turkey). Among a series of 19 elements analyzed, K, Mg, Fe, P and Sr are thought to directly reflect anthropogenic chemical residues. The elements Cr, Mg, Ni, Pb and Ti are considered to reflect the geological background of the site, yet their contents seem to vary over different chemical residue zones, making them a suitable tool for delineating activity areas. Overall, the sampling and analysis techniques applied at Düzen Tepe – mild acid sample extraction and ICP-OES analysis – have proven to be fit for this kind of study. The analyses allow human activity zones within the study area to be identified and interpreted and deliver insights into the archaeological contexts that could not be obtained by archaeological research alone.     

Application of GIS methods to retrieve orientation patterns from imagery; a case study from Beds I and II,Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)

The role of natural processes in the formation of the Bed I and II sites at Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) remains the subject of much debate, five decades after their original excavation. Preferred orientation of items is indicative of water disturbance, but compass bearings were not available in Mary Leakey's (1971) study. Using GIS methods, we have vectorized maps from 1960s excavations at Olduvai, and applied a range of statistical techniques to calculate items strike. The GIS analysis suggests strongly preferred orientation patterns in Bed I, and more heterogeneous angular histograms in Bed II. Two complementary lines of evidence support these results. Firstly, modelling of potential mapping errors provides a large interval of confidence for preferred orientation patterns. Second, the GIS study was extended to photographs of the earlier excavations and to maps from recent fieldwork at Olduvai; both yielded patterned arrangement of lithics and bones, and are consistent with results based on the analysis of the 1960s maps, i.e. a large number of the Bed I and II assemblages are preferentially oriented. These results highlight the potential of GIS applications to the analysis of imagery in Stone Age studies, and bear important implications for the understanding of the role of natural agents in site formation processes at Olduvai.     

Looking for problems: A systems approach to hominin palaeocommunities from Plio‐Pleistocene Africa

This paper evaluates the potential contribution(s) of faunal analysis to hominin palaeoecology at regional and continental scales, through an explicit investigation of the values, methods and conceptual frameworks of palaeoanthropology and their compatibility with real data structures. It employs a problem‐framing method developed in policy‐relevant science to establish a suitable research design for ‘large scale’ faunal analysis, before testing the method in a pilot study of 48 faunal assemblages from the African Plio‐Pleistocene. Hitherto, taphonomic bias has discouraged attempts to study faunal assemblages on large spatiotemporal scales, and most scientists have restricted their work to the smaller (site or local) scale and/or a subset of the total fauna. Furthermore, palaeoanthropological studies of fauna tend to address pre‐determined questions through analysis of statistical outputs (patterns), rather than investigating the limitations and potential of the data through exploratory work. This paper, despite identifying a number of inherent constraints on palaeocommunity analysis at the large scale—including a clear tendency towards the segregation of faunal assemblages along taphonomic and geographic lines—successfully defines palaeocommunities and identifies systematic variation in their distribution in several regional datasets and at the continental scale. It suggests that the potential viability of faunal analyses for a given project could be made empirically testable, and further work on the lines defined here might provide insight into the impacts of taphonomy and ecology at the large scale. Although there are conceptual and methodological problems associated with large‐scale faunal analyses, this paper suggests that they could provide some insight into hominin environments, evolutionary ecology and biogeography as part of a holistic, multi‐scale approach to our lineages' history. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organization of ceramic production at a fortified Early Bronze Age settlement in Moravia (Czech Republic) inferred from minimally destructive archaeometry

This paper explores how pottery production was organized at fortified sites of central Europe at the end of the Early Bronze Age. The organization of pottery production in terms of ethnography-based models was inferred jointly by non-destructive multi-elemental analysis, micropetrography and powder X-ray diffraction. This minimally destructive approach was used to explore the mode of pottery production at the fortified central site Blu?ina (Moravia, Czech Republic). Archaeometry-based indirect evidence indicates that tableware of a specific shape was produced using a specific technology at the site or in its close vicinity and that coarse ware was brought to the site from elsewhere. The results obtained were complexly evaluated and compared with ethnography-based categorizations to reveal the features of production organization of the Early Bronze Age pottery. Multidimensional analysis classified the production as intensified household labour and work of individual retainers, or nucleated corvée, depending on its scale and intensity.