Techniques for Assessing Standardization in Artifact Assemblages: Can We Scale Material Variability?

The study of artifact standardization is an important line of archaeological inquiry that continues to be plagued by the lack of an independent scale that would indicate what a highly variable or highly standardized assemblage should look like. Related to this problem is the absence of a robust stat...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American antiquity 2001-07, Vol.66 (3), p.493-504
Main Authors: Eerkens, Jelmer W., Bettinger, Robert L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archaeological methods
Archaeology
Brooches
Canyons
Hemic system
Historic artifacts
Material culture
Methodology and general studies
Methods
Prehistory and protohistory
Projectiles
Psychophysics
Robust statistics
Robustness (Statistics)
Standard deviation
Standardization
Typology, technology and attribute analysis
Visual perception
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Summary:The study of artifact standardization is an important line of archaeological inquiry that continues to be plagued by the lack of an independent scale that would indicate what a highly variable or highly standardized assemblage should look like. Related to this problem is the absence of a robust statistical technique for comparing variation between different kinds of assemblages. This paper addresses these issues. The Weber fraction for line-length estimation describes the minimum difference that humans can perceive through unaided visual inspection. This value is used to derive a constant for the coefficient of variation (CV = 1.7 percent) that represents the highest degree of standardization attainable through manual human production of artifacts. Random data are used to define a second constant for the coefficient of variation that represents variation expected when production is random (CV = 57.7 percent). These two constants can be used to assess the degree of standardization in artifact assemblages regardless of kind. Our analysis further demonstrates that CV is an excellent measure of standardization and provides a robust statistical technique for comparing standardization in samples of artifacts.
ISSN:0002-7316
2325-5064
DOI:10.2307/2694247