Albert C. Spaulding

Statistical Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact Types

WITHIN RECENT YEARS there appears to have been an increasing awareness on the part of archaeologists that certain statistical techniques offer economical methods of extracting information of cultural significance from archaeological data. The discussions of Kroeber (1940), Robinson (1951), and Brainerd (1951) have appeared in American Antiquity, and the last two even evoked a comment* (Lehmer, 1951). In addition to these papers, which are primarily devoted to exposition of method, a considerable number of special applications can be found in the literature. Archaeological research inevitably brings the researcher face to face with the problems of ordering and comparing quantities of data and of sampling error. There seems little doubt that the best approach to these problems involves a search of statistical literature for appropriate methods.

Reply to Ford

Ford’s objections to the ideas advanced in “Statistical Techniques for the Discovery of Artifact Types” appear to revolve around (1) the notion that use of such techniques somehow constitutes a denial of continuous variation of culture in time and space and (2) certain implicit definitions of such terms as “artifact type” and “historical usefulness” which in effect make their use the exclusive prerogative of the archaeologist engaged in inferring chronology by ranking sites or components of sites in order of likeness as judged by relative frequency of attribute combinations. I shall attempt to show that the first objection is a gratuitous error and that the second is no more than a semantic quagmire.

Hopewellian Burial Site In the Lower Republican Valley, Kansas

T HE senior author has for a number of years worked on the problem of the numerous and virtually unknown burial sites on the bluffs bordering the valley of the Republican River in Geary and Clay Counties, Kansas. This work has been a matter of some urgency, owing to the prevalence of unsystematic amateur excavation on the more prominent stone cairns found in the area. Fortunately, the complete excavation of the larger cairns involves too much labor for the merely curious, and it