Mesolithic: British Mesolithic assemblages

In archdata: Example Datasets from Archaeological Research

Description

Counts of 5 different stone artifact types from 33 Mesolithic sites in Britain.

Usage

data("Mesolithic")

Format

A data frame with 33 observations on the following 5 variables.

Microliths

Number of microliths

Scrapers

Number of scrapers

Burins

Number of burins

Axes

Number of axes

Saws

Number of saws

Details

Data on 33 Mesolithic (9000 - 4000 BCE) assemblages are a subset Pitts (1979) extracted from a set published by Mellars (1976). The data were scanned from Table A3 (Appendix A) in Baxter (1994).

Source

Baxter, M. J. 1994. Exploratory Multivariate Analysis in Archaeology. Edinburgh University Press. Edinburgh.

Mellars, P. 1976. Settlement Patterns and Industrial Variability in the British Mesolithic. In Problems in Economic and Social Archaeology, edited by Sieveking, G de G., I. H. Longworth, and K. E. Wilson, pp 375-99. Duckworth, London.

Pitts, M. W. 1979. Hides and Antlers: A New Look at the Gatherer-Hunter Site at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, England. World Archaeology 11: 32-44.

Examples

data(Mesolithic)
Mesolithic.pct <- prop.table(as.matrix(Mesolithic), 1)*100
apply(Mesolithic.pct, 2, quantile)
cor(Mesolithic.pct)

Example output

     Microliths  Scrapers    Burins      Axes      Saws
0%     7.936508  0.000000  0.000000 0.0000000  0.000000
25%   46.153846  9.756098  1.045296 0.0000000  0.000000
50%   61.764706 28.571429  2.380952 0.0000000  0.000000
75%   89.830508 37.855344  6.666667 0.0512952  0.877193
100%  94.029851 90.476190 36.304348 5.7142857 15.976970
           Microliths   Scrapers      Burins        Axes       Saws
Microliths  1.0000000 -0.9469540 -0.37165855 -0.30811312 -0.2994105
Scrapers   -0.9469540  1.0000000  0.12209892  0.25189492  0.1914050
Burins     -0.3716586  0.1220989  1.00000000 -0.04497788 -0.2009919
Axes       -0.3081131  0.2518949 -0.04497788  1.00000000  0.2799050
Saws       -0.2994105  0.1914050 -0.20099189  0.27990496  1.0000000

archdata documentation built on Jan. 16, 2021, 5:35 p.m.