The use of statistical size estimations in minimum number calculations

Analyses of archaeological faunal assemblages often require the use of varied quantitative techniques for reconstructing aspects of the harvested populations. This is particularly important with the increasing use of zooarchaeological data outside of the realm of traditional archaeological inquiry. Detailed size estimations of archaeological faunal specimens can be used to distinguish between the remains of individual animals, aiding in the reconstruction of minimum number calculations. Statistical regression provides a particularly useful technique for generating size estimations which may then be used to calculate such modified MNI values. This paper outlines a methodology for utilising regression estimated sizes in MNI calculations, and tests the methodology in the context of a case study involving fish remains from Aleutian Islands archaeological sites. The use of this methodology to generate modified MNI values results in consistent increases over values calculated using traditional MNI approaches. Such an approach, while more costly in terms of required effort, is felt to be preferable to traditional approaches in contexts where detailed size estimations are usefully calculated to answer other research questions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

中国城市化水平的综合判断

在测度和评价城市化水平高低时应该对人口城市化水平和城市人口绝对规模进行综合判断。学界通常用市区非农业人口口径来计算城市化水平,对城市外来人口考虑不够。对这种偏小的口径进行修正后发现中国的城市化水平至多略低于同等收入下的国际城市化水平。从城市人口与城市经济的适应程度看,中国的城市劳动生产率与发展状况类似的国家相比有偏低的倾向。因此,与流行的看法相反,中国的城市化水平与经济发展相适应的。笔者认为中国城市的存量部分已经"人满为患",未来城市化的着力点应是城市的增量部分,包括现有城市规模的扩大和新城市的设置。应进行户籍制度、土地制度、创业制度等制度创新,为城市发展提供宽松的外部环境。     

聚集经济与最优城市规模探讨

经济活动的空间集中是一个引人注目的现象,聚集经济是空间集中的重要原因之一。虽然外部性对经济活动的集中有重要影响,但要解释聚集经济的来源还必须寻求更微观、更基本的经济主体行为上的原因。每个城市都存在着一个最优的规模,这个最有效率的规模是由经济活动空间集中所带来的利益与所引起的成本之间的一个均衡所决定的。因此,在城市化过程中,必须注重城市功能与效率的充分发挥。本文结合规模收益递增和单中心圆形城市模型,分析了通勤成本、城市规模收益递增程度对最优城市规模的影响,讨讨了城市人均收入与城市规模之间的关系,推导了两种对立的力量所决定的最优城市规模。文中指出:在一定条件下,城市人均收入与城市规模之间存在倒U形关系;否则,在城市总生产函数中规模收益递增程度足够强的情况下,最优城市规模取决于通勤成本。     

Pig exploitation in the southern Kanto region,Japan

This study investigates changes in past human and animal relationships by focusing on pig (Sus scrofa) remains excavated from archaeological sites in southern Kanto, Japan. Pigs and humans have had a close relationship since prehistoric times and the process of change in this relationship, including possible domestication, is one of the major issues in Japanese zooarchaeology. This study attempts to gain a better understanding of the nature of past interaction between humans and pigs by investigating their relative importance compared with other vertebrate remains, kill‐off patterns, and changes in their size and shape at these sites. The materials used for this study date from the Earliest to Final Jomon (ca. 10,000–2500 BP), Yayoi (ca. 2500–1700 BP) and Kofun (ca. 1700–1300 BP) periods. The relative proportions of pigs were calculated to show the overall trend of pig exploitation in each site. Age at death was obtained based on the state of tooth eruption. Bucco‐lingual crown measurements were taken on the third and fourth premolars and on each cusp of the first and second molars of the mandible, and the logarithmic ratio technique was then applied to these data. The age structure of Sus varies between different sites in the Jomon Period, and significant changes were observed in the Yayoi and Kofun Periods. A decrease in the relative proportion of pigs in the faunal assemblages was observed from Jomon to Kofun. Three major differences were observed in the size of pigs. The overall size of pigs significantly increased from Early to Middle Jomon, whilst a decrease in size occurred in the Yayoi Period. Finally, overall size increased significantly during the Kofun Period. Together with the archaeological evidence—such as the ritual burial of pigs accompanying human burial—we suggest that the interaction between pigs and humans became gradually stronger at some sites during the Late Jomon Period, and the relationship intensified in the Yayoi Period. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Αge‐associated Variation and Sexual Dimorphism in Adult Cranial Morphology: Implications in Anthropological Studies

The current paper explores the impact of age and sex on adult cranial shape and size variation in the documented collections from St Bride's and Spitalfields. The scope is to assess the extent to which it is valid to pool age and sex groups in inter‐population comparisons that use cranial data. For this purpose, age and sex differences in cranial shape and size were explored using multivariate analysis of variance, Discriminant analysis and Mann–Whitney tests. The results suggest a clear change in cranial shape with increasing age; however, this change is not statistically significant. Therefore, it is justifiable to pool different age groups in bioarchaeological analyses. Increasing age also has a minimal impact on cranial size among females, whereas among males, its impact is small but statistically significant. Finally, cranial shape and size are significantly different between males and females, irrespective of their age. This dimorphism can be used for the assessment of sex, although attention should be given to over‐classification problems when using discriminant analysis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-platform program for likelihood-based statistical comparisons of mortality profiles on a triangular graph

The construction of mortality profiles to investigate age-at-death patterns is a typical component of most faunal analyses. While many methods exist for constructing and comparing mortality profiles, plotting the percentages of juvenile, prime, and old individuals on a triangular graph, or ternary diagram, remains a popular method for making comparisons. Typically, these comparisons are made visually, but because sample sizes are often small, any differences may be the product of sampling rather than meaningful contrasts in depositional history. To overcome this problem, here we present a likelihood-based method for making statistical comparisons of mortality profiles on a triangular graph, and we make available a cross-platform computer program that implements the method. Although we developed the method with mortality profiles in mind, in principle, it can be used to analyze any kind of artifact for which there are three distinct categories.     

The spatial extent of agglomeration economies across the wage earnings distribution

We investigate the spatial extent of agglomeration economies across the wage earnings distribution using economic mass (total employment) in four distance bands around each individual’s establishment in a quantile regression framework. We control for observable and unobservable individual and establishment characteristics. Remaining endogeneity in the model is assessed with a set of instrumental variables. Results indicate a positive effect of economic mass on wage earnings up to 25 km away from the establishment. The spatial extent of agglomeration economies is similar across the wage earnings distribution. However, increases in economic mass shift the wage earnings distribution in a nonsymmetric way.     

风险视角下的城市聚落形成模拟

幂次法则是普遍存在于自然科学和社会科学界的现象,而城市位序-规模法则是幂次法则在城市科学中的体现之一,然而特定城市规模分布一直缺乏完整的解释。本文尝试结合城市增长过程中土地开发行为的报酬递增规则与土地开发主体的风险认知行为,以城市增长的微观过程为切入视角模拟宏观城市聚落演化过程,进而探讨风险态度对城市聚落形态,尤其是对其规模分布的影响。研究结果表明：①即使城市聚落演化过程中存在多种风险态度,幂次法则在城市聚落的规模分布中仍保持着稳健性; ②现实世界中城市聚落规模分布的变异和稳定可能来自城市主体风险态度的多样性。     

Urban evolution in the USA

On a sustained basis, cities are of non-uniform relative sizes.This paper addresses three basic issues which arise from thissimple observation by examining the size distribution of UScities over the period 1900–1990. First, we explore thereasons why there is a wide distribution of city sizes. Second,we characterize the evolution of the size distribution of cities,documenting growth in sizes and numbers of cities. We ask whetherthe relative size distribution of cities has remained stableover time, or if it has displayed, instead, a tendency to collapse,flatten, or otherwise change its shape. We also examine evidenceon whether the size distribution obeys Zipf's Law. Third, weexamine the degree and determinants of mobility of individualcities within this distribution, asking to what extent citiesare moving up and down in the distribution and how this movementis influenced by cities' geographic characteristics. We usea newly constructed data with consistent metropolitan area definitionsover this century, discussing the issues and linking our resultsto the relevant literature.     

Sample-specific (universal) metric approaches for determining the sex of immature human skeletal remains using permanent tooth dimensions

In this paper, three approaches for developing sample-specific sex determination methods of immature skeletal remains based on permanent tooth dimensions are proposed and tested using a sample of identified skeletons. The sample comprises adult and subadult individuals selected from the Lisbon documented skeletal collection, housed at the National Museum of Natural History in Lisbon, Portugal. Faciolingual and mesiodistal diameters were the tooth dimensions utilized. In the first approach, sex-specific logistic regression formulae based on adult tooth dimensions are developed and then used to determine the sex of the subadult sample. The second and third approaches are based on the sectioning point procedure, which uses the overall mean of a measurement (tooth diameter) collected from the sample as the discriminant criteria for determining the sex of the individuals in that sample. While in the second approach the adult overall mean of each dimension is used as the discriminant criteria for determining the sex of the subadults, in the third approach it is the subadult overall mean of each dimension that comprises the discriminant criteria that is applied back to the subadults for determining sex. Results show that the canines are the teeth with the highest sexual dimorphism and methods of sex determination based on canine dimensions provide correct allocation accuracies between 58.8% and 100% depending on the diameter and the approach that is being used. Canine faciolingual dimensions provide the best overall results. Combinations of measurements from the same and different teeth do not increase significantly the accuracy of the methods and approaches. Some of the problems of subadult sex determination methods based on adult tooth dimensions result from differing levels of sexual dimorphism between the adult and subadult segment of the sample. Mortality or cultural bias may increase or decrease the sexual dimorphism of the subadults compared to the adults. Small subadult samples utilized in this study may also raise questions regarding the accuracy of the three different sample-specific approaches. However, high consistency of results using the canine and different approaches, suggests that adult and subadult canine dimensions can be reliable sex discriminators of immature skeletal remains in archaeological samples. The major advantage of the approaches presented here is that they can be used to derive sample-specific methods and, therefore, eliminate the problem of applying morphological or metric methods to individuals originating from a population that differs from the one that contributed to the development of the method.