ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the different forms that archaeological data may take in real-world situations. It makes distinctions between data based on (1) level of measurement and (2) the form of probability distribution that data may follow. This chapter discusses the properties of the two most common forms of data distribution in archaeology, the normal distribution and the Poisson distribution, and it talks about what to do when one’s data do not follow these distributions. This chapter closes by reducing the range of archaeological data to the four most commonly occurring scenarios as a guide for selecting appropriate statistical models.
