Seriation (statistics)

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In combinatorial data analysis, seriation is the process of finding an arrangement of all objects in a set, in a linear order, given a loss function. [1] The main goal is exploratory, to reveal structural information.

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Series may refer to:

Seriation is a way of situating an object within a series. It may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oscar Montelius</span> Swedish archaeologist

Gustav Oscar August Montelius, known as Oscar Montelius was a Swedish archaeologist who refined the concept of seriation, a relative chronological dating method.

An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between these types is an empirical observation, but their interpretation in terms of ethnic or political groups is based on archaeologists' understanding and interpretation and is in many cases subject to long-unresolved debates. The concept of the archaeological culture is fundamental to culture-historical archaeology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stratigraphy (archaeology)</span> Study of archaeological sedimentation for dating purposes

Stratigraphy is a key concept to modern archaeological theory and practice. Modern excavation techniques are based on stratigraphic principles. The concept derives from the geological use of the idea that sedimentation takes place according to uniform principles. When archaeological finds are below the surface of the ground, the identification of the context of each find is vital in enabling the archaeologist to draw conclusions about the site and about the nature and date of its occupation. It is the archaeologist's role to attempt to discover what contexts exist and how they came to be created. Archaeological stratification or sequence is the dynamic superimposition of single units of stratigraphy, or contexts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transverse arrowhead</span> Arrowhead with a straight cutting edge

A transverse arrowhead is a type of trapezoidal stone projectile point most commonly associated with the European Mesolithic and Neolithic periods although it is also found in other regions and periods.

The Two-square cipher, also called double Playfair, is a manual symmetric encryption technique. It was developed to ease the cumbersome nature of the large encryption/decryption matrix used in the four-square cipher while still being slightly stronger than the single-square Playfair cipher.

In archaeology, seriation is a relative dating method in which assemblages or artifacts from numerous sites in the same culture are placed in chronological order. Where absolute dating methods, such as radio carbon, cannot be applied, archaeologists have to use relative dating methods to date archaeological finds and features. Seriation is a standard method of dating in archaeology. It can be used to date stone tools, pottery fragments, and other artifacts. In Europe, it has been used frequently to reconstruct the chronological sequence of graves in a cemetery.

The term seriation [mise en série] was proposed for use in semiotics by Jean Molino and derived from classical philology. Seriation "invokes the idea that any investigator, in order to assign some plausible meaning to a given phenomenon, must interpret it within a series of comparable phenomena." One cannot interpret what philology calls a hapax; that is, an isolated phenomenon. Art historian Erwin Panofsky has explained the situation in very clear terms:

In psychology and cognitive neuroscience, pattern recognition describes a cognitive process that matches information from a stimulus with information retrieved from memory.

Sequence dating, an archaeological relative dating method, allows assemblages to be arranged in a rough serial order, which is then taken to indicate time. Sequence dating is a method of seriation developed by the Egyptologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie. By linking styles of pottery with different time periods, he was able to establish the relative chronology of the site.

In statistics, combinatorial data analysis (CDA) is the study of data sets where the order in which objects are arranged is important. CDA can be used either to determine how well a given combinatorial construct reflects the observed data, or to search for a suitable combinatorial construct that does fit the data.

<i>Morotopithecus</i> Species of extinct ape from Miocene central Africs

Morotopithecus is a species of fossil ape discovered in Miocene-age deposits of Moroto, Uganda.

Leslie Spier was an American anthropologist best known for his ethnographic studies of American Indians. He spent a great deal of his professional life as a teacher; he retired in 1955 and died in 1961.

The Tahunian is variously referred to as an archaeological culture, flint industry and period of the Palestinian Stone Age around Wadi Tahuna near Bethlehem. It was discovered and termed by Denis Buzy during excavations in 1928.

Wadi Tahuna is an archaeological site of the Tahunian culture that was excavated in 1928 by Denis Buzy, several kilometers south to Bethlehem in Palestine.

Horizontal and vertical décalage are terms coined by developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, which he used to describe the four stages in Piaget's theory of cognitive development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. According to Piaget, horizontal and vertical décalage generally occur during the concrete operations stage of development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuya</span>

Nuya was a ruler of some part of Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period, possibly during the 17th century BC. Nuya is attested by a single scarab seal of unknown provenance. Based on a seriation of the seals of the Second Intermediate Period, the Danish Egyptologist Kim Ryholt has proposed that Nuya was a king of the 14th Dynasty, reigning after Nehesy and before Yaqub-Har. As such, he would have ruled in the 17th century BC from Avaris over the eastern Nile Delta and possibly over the Western Delta as well.

Chronological dating, or simply dating, is the process of attributing to an object or event a date in the past, allowing such object or event to be located in a previously established chronology. This usually requires what is commonly known as a "dating method". Several dating methods exist, depending on different criteria and techniques, and some very well known examples of disciplines using such techniques are, for example, history, archaeology, geology, paleontology, astronomy and even forensic science, since in the latter it is sometimes necessary to investigate the moment in the past during which the death of a cadaver occurred. These methods are typically identified as absolute, which involves a specified date or date range, or relative, which refers to dating which places artifacts or events on a timeline relative to other events and/or artifacts. Other markers can help place an artifact or event in a chronology, such as nearby writings and stratigraphic markers.

References

  1. Hahsler, Michael; Hornik, Kurt; Buchta, Christian (2008). "Getting Things in Order: An Introduction to the R Package seriation". Journal of Statistical Software. 25 (3). doi: 10.18637/jss.v025.i03 .