ABSTRACT

The relationship between archaeology and statistics has been a long, but at times uncomfortable, one (Orton 1999). It can be traced back at least to the 1950s, but was formalized (the metaphor of an engagement party comes to mind) by the conference Mathematics in the Archaeological and Historical Sciences, held in Mamaia, Romania, in 1970 (Hodson et al 1971). The 1970s were a decade of optimism and experimentation, but in the 1980s the post-processual backlash against the ‘New Archaeology’ of the 1960s and 1970s led to ‘the result that methodologically useful babies were unfairly thrown out with the theoretical bathwater’ (Baxter 1994: 7). Opinion in the 1990s and since has been divided, perhaps just reflecting the fragmentation within archaeology itself that characterizes this period.