In collaboration with Soudeep Deb, Josh Falk, and Arun Srinivasan, I’ve developed a new approach to the statistical analysis of time series data in archaeology. The basic approach is a non-parametric analysis of time series that clusters similar series together. From this, we created an improved semi-parametric approach to quantifying and comparing birth seasonality on the basis of intratooth oxygen isotope data.

The R package for implementing this analysis is available from CRAN: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SCEM/index.html

For detailed information about the statistical method and its validation using modern and archaeological datasets, please see:

“New Statistical Approaches to Intra-Individual Isotopic Analysis and Modeling Birth Seasonality in Studies of Herd Animals” (2018) Archaeometry 61(2):478-493. (with Soudeep Deb, Josh Falk, and Arun Srinavasan).

For further information on why SCEM is a better way to analyze birth seasonality data, please see:

“Multi-Season Reproduction and Pastoralist Production Strategies: New Approaches to Birth Seasonality from the South Caucasus Region”. (2021) Journal of Field Archaeology.