The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology

DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Leishman. Jean Pike.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We present work on a methodology that sits at the intersection of architecture, archaeology, and Bayesian statistics to expand the quantity of architectural data considered in analysis of precontact architectures. Two sites are examined as possible precedents for Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon, NM: the late ninth-century McPhee Pueblo in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Trevor Keevil. Melissa Torquato. Sarah Coon. Daniel Joyce. Erik Otárola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists continue to debate what caused the mass extinction of North American megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene—human hunting, climate change, or a combination of both. This debate persists because archaeologists lack standardized methodologies to relate unobservable human hunting behaviors with fossilized animal remains. Some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonathan Paige. Charles Perreault.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Observed changes in rates of technological change play important roles in many models seeking to explain or identify the greater adaptability of some hominins over others, adaptation to changing environments, and many other processes. We quantify how robust detection of a shift in the rate of technological change is to error in measuring...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Benjamin Utting.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By studying stone tool technology, archaeologists and anthropologists shed light on big questions in human prehistory, including how ancient peoples adapted to changing environments, moved throughout landscapes, and interacted with other groups of people. There are many methodological approaches for characterizing stone tool technology,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erik Otárola-Castillo. Melissa Torquato. Jesse Wolfhagen. Matthew E. Hill.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Zooarchaeologists rely on long-term records of faunal remains to study significant diachronic changes in human-environmental interactions, including foraging-farming transitions, human-driven extinctions, animal translocations, and the development of complex societies. Here, we define the magnitude and direction of change observed in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Baxter. Steve Nash. Michele Koons. Erick Robinson.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Seventy years after the Field Museum’s excavation at Tularosa Cave (1000 BCE–AD 1200) in the Mogollon Highlands of west-central New Mexico, its stratigraphic integrity remains a contentious topic. Bayesian analysis on a series of new AMS dates from sandals and corn found within different levels of the cave demonstrate that much of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Wolfhagen.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Profiles of stable oxygen isotopic values (δ18O) from archaeofaunal tooth enamel provide in-depth information about the past environments in which animals lived while their teeth mineralized. Cyclical regression models can fit a specimen’s isotopic profile to a particular sinusoidal curve to estimate aspects of past environments and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicolas Gauthier.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological data are crucial for understanding how human societies shaped—and were shaped by—their biophysical environments. Yet these data are often sparse, noisy, and time averaged, making it difficult to uncover patterns of change across space and time. Process-based simulations are one way to fill the gaps in these imperfect proxy...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melissa Torquato.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout prehistory, Indigenous peoples in the Interior Eastern Woodlands of North America relied heavily on hunted and gathered resources. They commonly gathered and consumed nuts, which resulted in many archaeological sites containing these carbonized remains. Hammerstones and nutting stones in archaeological contexts suggest that...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcus Hamilton.

This is an abstract from the "The Expanding Bayesian Revolution in Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To date, the “Bayesian Revolution” in archaeology has focused primarily on statistical inference: the move from hypothesis testing to credence building. Bayesian thinking extends far beyond the practicalities of statistical inference. Bayesian theory is about epistemology; it describes how we acquire knowledge of the world by reducing the...