ABSTRACT
Archaeologists are continually manipulating their data, much like Alice, in the hope of discovering the underlying nature of a particular cultural system from its artifactual representation. In fact, the data frequently never recover from this beating; they are then buried quietly and without ceremony in cardboard coffins along with field notes and other reminders of their previous existence. The Q-mode analysis would show them to be similar, but later examination of their spatial relationship would show them to be located far apart. On the other hand, some squares ranked as similar by the multidimensional scaling will turn out to cluster together in the same part of the cave because they really are all part of one activity area. The isolation of pathways within a living floor is one step toward the recreation of the cycle of processing activities that occurred there. It provides us with information about the flow of materials through the living space.
