Dating archaeological sites by seriation.

• Finding a relative chronological order of sites is a common problem in archaeology. • Artifacts contained in sites characterize them and often help in their dating. • Seriation aims at ordering a set of units on the basis of types that correlate them. • Algorithms for seriation can treat large dat...

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Published in:Journal of Cultural Heritage Vol. 72; pp. 42 - 48
Main Authors: Crabu, Elisa, Fenu, Caterina, Rodriguez, Giuseppe, Tanda, Giuseppa
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier B.V. Mar2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        12962074
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      jtl: Journal of Cultural Heritage
      issn: 12962074
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      dt: Mar2025
      vid: 72
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      pub: Elsevier B.V.
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        183709133
        10.1016/j.culher.2024.12.025
      ppf: 42
      ppct: 6
      formats:
      tig:
        atl: Dating archaeological sites by seriation.
      aug:
        au:
          Crabu, Elisa
          Fenu, Caterina
          Rodriguez, Giuseppe
          Tanda, Giuseppa
        affil:
          Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Via Ospedale 72, Cagliari, 09124, Italy
          Centro Studi "Identità" e Memoria (CeSim), Viale Caprera 12, Sassari, 07100
      su:
        Archaeological excavations
        Bipartite graphs
        Neolithic Period
        Archaeology
        Engraving
      sug:
        subj:
          Archaeological excavations
          Bipartite graphs
          Neolithic Period
          Archaeology
          Engraving
      keyword:
        Domus de Janas
        Fiedler value
        PQ-trees
        Seriation
      ab: • Finding a relative chronological order of sites is a common problem in archaeology. • Artifacts contained in sites characterize them and often help in their dating. • Seriation aims at ordering a set of units on the basis of types that correlate them. • Algorithms for seriation can treat large datasets, but produce approximate solutions. • An iterative refinement method may lead to improve the solution by a small effort. Seriation is an ordering problem which consists of determining the best ordering of a set of correlated units, whose relationship is defined by a bipartite graph. It has several applications in different fields, like genetics, anthropology, archaeology and psychology. Our application deals with the relative dating of archaeological sites based on the characteristics of parietal engravings found in them. Our interest lies mainly in the Domus the Janas , Neolithic burial sites typical of Sardinia, Italy. Two matrices, derived from the available data, give information about the similarity among the units. A well known seriation method is applied to them. Due to its formulation, the seriation algorithm employed produces in some cases a solution which does not appear to be completely satisfying. So we propose an approach to improve the quality of the solution, based on a quality indicator.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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          year: 2025
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