ABSTRACT
Integrative Distance Analysis (IDA) was designed to understand and account for proximity, both spatial and nonspatial, within complex datasets. Data for technology, subsistence economy, economic organization, and social organization were compared to geographic location using IDA. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are in widespread use in archaeology, and spatial autocorrelation is well known to archaeologists. Jorgensen recorded 292 ethnographic variables for 172 aboriginal groups in western United States and Canada. Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) was chosen for inclusion in IDA for two reasons. First, its use in archaeological studies is widespread. Second, because MDS can be run directly on the already constructed distance matrices, there is an intuitive and procedural elegance following from the Mantel test through to MDS. MDS procedures assign a strength measurement to each of the dimensions that express the proportion of overall variation explained. Procrustes Randomization Test (PROTEST) has been used on several ecological samples to show community structure and evolutionary relationships.
