Untitled - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche

The golden years for mathematics and computers in archaeology (1965-1985)
5. Many other scientific influences
During this period, many other types of research inuenced the elds
of the Human and Social Sciences, for example:
– System dynamics of J.W. Forrester: 1961 (Industrial dynamics), 1969
(Urban dynamics), 1971 (World dynamics). It is interesting to note the relationships
with the disputed 1972 “Limits to growth” of the club of Rome,
recently updated in 2004.
– Mathematical Ecology (Pielou 1969);
– Catastrophe theory (Thom 1972);
– Mathematical modeling including Multi-agent system (Doran 1981);
– Sampling (Desabie 1966; Cochran 1977);
– Expert systems (Dendral 1965; Mycin 1972);
– Quantitative Geography (Chisholm 1962; Haggett 1965; Berry
1967);
– Physical and chemical analysis (Archaeometry, name given in 1958);
– Quantitative environmental studies.
6. 1970. The revolution of multidimensional data analysis
The mathematical foundations of multidimensional data analysis have
been well known since the beginning of the 20 th century (Principal Component
Analysis by Pearson 1901). But the computations for obtaining the eigenvalues
during the process of diagonalising the matrix were too long to be used
without computers. This was the reason why, around 1930, their development
was limited to Psychometry (Spearmann, Thurstone, Guttman, Burt) by the
denition of special questionnaires, simplifying the computations.
From 1960 to 1970, the rst computerised algorithms appeared which
were at the origin of a new revolution of Statistics. The multidimensional data
analysis techniques included several different techniques:
– The Cluster Analysis techniques, guring, mainly by a tree, the similarities
between objects described by numerous variables and producing clusters of
objects. 1963 is the year of the rst publication of the famous book by R.R.
Sokal and P.H.A. Sneath Numerical Taxonomy.
– The scaling techniques, reducing a multidimensional space of data to a one
or two dimensional scale; the most famous of them is the Non-metric Multidimensional
Scaling by J.B. Kruskal (from Bell labs), rst published in 1964.
– The “Factor” Analysis techniques, a family of techniques based on the diagonalization
of a matrix of correlation or association between individuals or
variables, including Principal Component Analysis (Pearson 1901), Factor
Analysis (Spearman 1904), Discriminant Analysis (Mahalanobis 1927;
Fisher 1936), Correspondence Analysis (Benzécri 1973).
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