Analysis of Archaeological Phases Using the R Package ArchaeoPhases

Abstract

We propose new statistical tools to analyze and to estimate the characteristics of time periods based on the posterior distribution of an associated collection of dates. These tools are implemented in the R package ArchaeoPhases. The required inputs are simulated samples from the posterior distribution of a collection of dates. Such Markov chain Monte Carlo samples are provided, for instance, by BCal, ChronoModel, or OxCal, freely available software applications built for the chronological modeling of estimated dates. We give a practical introduction to the package ArchaeoPhases using published data and comment on the statistical results.

Keywords

• bayesian modeling
• markov chain monte carlo samples
• tempo plot
• time range interval
• transition interval
• gap interval
• gap test