Point pattern analysis revisited

Clive Orton

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2004, 15, 299-315

Abstract

Point pattern analysis has been one of archaeology's quantitative approaches since at least the 1970s, and has been applied at a range of scales, from the region to the site. Various techniques have been 'borrowed' from other disciplines, notably ecology, such as quadrat analysis, nearest-neighbour analysis and kernel density analysis. There have also been 'home-grown' techniques such as Local Density Analysis, Presab and Unconstrained Clustering, as well as the use of Cluster Analysis itself. This paper reviews these developments, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. A statistical advance was made in the 1970s with the development of the K function approach. This has become embodied in the ecological statistical software package ADE-4 as the Ripley and Intertype programs. These programs were found in a search for suitable affordable software for teaching spatial analysis at post-graduate level, and have been used in this role for three years, taking as a test-bed the Danish mesolithic site of Barmose I. The outcome of this work is presented as a case study and compared with earlier analyses of this dataset. The value of ADE-4 for archaeological spatial analysis is assessed.

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