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Nels C. Nelson and Chronological Archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Richard B. Woodbury
Richard B. Woodbury*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.
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Abstract

A series of papers at the 24th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, in Salt Lake City in 1959, was devoted to Developments in Dating Techniques, and dedicated to Nels C. Nelson in recognition of his pioneering role in establishing the technique of stratigraphic excavation in America. During his work in the Galisteo Basin of New Mexico in 1914 he dug a series of ten 1-foot levels, classified all the sherds found in them into seven types, and calculated their frequencies by levels. These resembled sections of normal distribution curves, and demonstrated that statistical analysis of data from arbitrary levels could reveal chronological change just as could data from physically distinct strata. Within a few years this technique was employed by several other archaeologists and it continues to the present to be an indispensable technique of investigation.

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , January 1960 , pp. 400 - 401
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1960

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