Irene Mounds Mortuary Data: Body Treatment Raw Data and Multiple Correspondence Analysis Scores

Summary

In the dissertation titled "Interactions with the Incorporeal in the Mississippian and Ancestral Puebloan Worlds," the author analyzed the Irene Mortuary Data: Inhumation Body Treatment data set in an examination of the performance of mortuary ritual at Middle and Late Mississippian period settlement on the Georgia and South Carolina coast. The analysis of body treatment and the larger consideration of mortuary ritual were designed to understand the identities of the spirits of the dead in Mississippian period villages of the Georgia/Carolina coast and in Protohistoric era Zuni villages. Please see the dissertation for details about the analysis and analysis procedures: http://core.tdar.org/project/380979.

The Irene Body Treatment data set was analyzed to evaluate whether particular body treatments selectively memorialized elect members of the dead, or body treatment memorialized nearly all the dead uniformly. The data were used in a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which helps to characterize the relative differentiation and/or uniformity of body treatments. MCA is a multivariate statistical procedure that places cases (e.g., burials) with similar attributes (e.g., body treatment attributes) close to each other in a low-dimensional space; it places cases with different attributes far apart from each other in this space.

The Hawikku and Kechiba:wa inhumation body treatment analysis and MCA are presented in the dissertation's Chapter 5 "Mississippian Landscapes of Memorialized Dead on the Georgia Coast: Irene Mounds Site." The graphical results of the MCA are presented in Figures 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, and 5.12.

The Irene Inhumation Body Treatment data were extracted for analysis from the study's primary aggregated mortuary data set, available at the following URL: http://core.tdar.org/dataset/380985. These data include all cases that were used in the study's analysis. In addition, it includes all body treatment variables and the treatment (variable) attributes used in the MCA.

The Irene inhumation body treatment data set that is curated here contains two data sheets: 1) the raw data used in the MCA, and 2) the resulting metrics from the MCA. The raw data record individual body treatment variables (e.g., articulation, body position, posture, orientation, etc.), with multiple categorical variable states (i.e., attributes) for each variable. These data were passed into the SPSS 20 MCA algorithm to create a graphical representation of the relative similarity and/or differences in body treatment among individual sets of remains. Please see the dissertation's Figures 5.8, 5.9, 5.10, 5.11, and 5.12.

The resulting metrics from the inhumation body treatment MCA contain data that pertain to the production of the MCA graphical space and to the additional analysis/interpretation of that space. Foremost, this data sheet contains each burial's MCA object score (i.e., each burial's coordinates for placement in the two-dimensional space). Second, it contains each burial's k-means cluster assignment (if applicable) within the coordinate space. Finally, it contains additional demographic and attribute data that are useful for further exploration of mortuary patterning in the MCA space.

Keywords

Temporal Coverage

Calendar Date: 1150 to 1300

Calendar Date: 1300 to 1450

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): M Scott Thompson

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