ABSTRACT
Over the past 20 years, the wide-ranging use of databases has greatly increased the ease with which data can be gathered, stored, summarised and reviewed. Combined with the ever-increasing accessibility of statistical software packages, this has greatly increased the ability for even the lone archaeologist to apply complex quantitative techniques to their data. Yet while there is an ever-widening array of statistical tools by which data can be examined, it is not the development of new techniques that has had the greatest impact upon archaeology. Rather, it is the relative speed and ease with which existing statistical techniques can be applied, to the point where almost anyone can examine exceptionally large data sets with relative ease using complex techniques.
