ABSTRACT
We have emphasised throughout this book that it is the spatial dimension of much archaeological data that makes it such a distinctive problem for data storage and manipulation. This spatial component also presents some distinctive problems if we wish to engage in quantitative data analysis, and this brings us to the area of Spatial Analysis. The use of spatial statistics in archaeology is one of the most difficult areas to introduce into a contemporary discussion of archaeological methods because it is so intimately associated with the ‘new geography’ and ‘new archaeology’ of the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, many archaeologists are either theoretically predisposed to reject the use of statistical approaches to space or are rapidly discouraged by the complexity of the statistics themselves.
