On Building and Fitting a Spatio-temporal Change-point Model for Settlement and Growth at Bourewa, Fiji Islands
June 2010; Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics) (in review)
G. K. Nicholls and P. D. Nunn
“The Bourewa beach site on the Rove Peninsula of Viti Levu is the earliest known human settlement in the Fiji Islands. How did the settlement at Bourewa develop in space and time? We have radiocarbon dates on sixty specimens, found in association with evidence for human presence, taken from pits across the site. Owing to the lack of diagnostic stratigraphy, there is no direct archaeological evidence for distinct phases of occupation through the period of interest. We give a spatio-temporal analysis of settlement at Bourewa in which the deposition rate for dated specimens plays an important role. Spatio-temporal mapping of radiocarbon date intensity is confounded by uneven post-depositional thinning. We assume that the confounding processes act in such a way that the absence of dates remains informative of zero rate for the original deposition process. We model and fit the onset-field, that is, we estimate for each location across the site the time at which deposition of datable specimens began. The temporal process generating our spatial onset-field is a model of the original settlement dynamics.”
- Read the paper [PDF]
It would be helpful if a full citation to the source were included (there is none in the article itself).
I was unable to find the full citation online, and have contacted the authors. The blog post will be updated when I receive the information from them.
Duane:
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics) (in review)
Original post has been updated as well!