Empirical Bayes estimation for archaeological stratigraphy

G. T. Allum, R. G. Aykroyd and J. G. B. Haigh

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, 1999, vol. 48, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: Models and algorithms are presented for the stratigraphic analysis of earth core samples collected at archaeological sites. The aim is to separate the occupation of the site into distinct periods, by dividing the earth core into well‐defined blocks of uniform magnetic susceptibility. The models describe the response of detector equipment by using both a spread function and an error process, and they incorporate prior beliefs regarding the nature of the true susceptibility values. The prior parameters are estimated by using pseudolikelihood and the susceptibilities by maximum a posteriori methods via the one‐step‐late algorithm. These procedures are illustrated with data from synthetic and real core specimens. The new procedures prove to be far superior to other approaches, producing reconstructions which clearly show distinct periods of uniform magnetic susceptibility separated by sharp discontinuities.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9876.00135

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jorssc:v:48:y:1999:i:1:p:1-14

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://ordering.onli ... 1111/(ISSN)1467-9876

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C is currently edited by R. Chandler and P. W. F. Smith

More articles in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C from Royal Statistical Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().