Correspondence Analysis and West Mexico Archaeology

Because the archaeology of West Mexico has received little attention from researchers, large segments of the region’s prehistoric ceramic sequences have long remained incomplete. This book goes far toward filling that gap by analyzing a collection of potsherds excavated in the 1960s and housed since then, though heretofore unanalyzed, at UCLA. The authors employ the rarely used statistical technique known as correspondence analysis to sequence the Long-Glassow collection of artifacts.

The book explains how correspondence analysis works and how it can be applied in archaeology. In addition to describing the archaeological sites in north central Jalisco where the collection comes from, the authors provide an ethnohistorical overview including information on the earliest Spanish explorers to reach the sites. They sequence more than seventy ceramic types and derive a master sequence from more than ten thousand potsherds. In addition to Mesoamerican archaeologists, the audience will also include other archaeologists concerned with ceramic analysis or the application of statistics to archaeology.