I think the most important question is what form of quantification you're
using.
If it's NISP-based, you can basically forget formal hypothesis testing as
you're samples are almost certainly subject to sample inflation (see e.g.
Grayson 1984, pp.22-23 for a clear explanation of this). The only exception
would be if the bones are barely fragmented at all. Of course, if you run
the tests (chi-squared would make sense by the sound of it) and find no
significant pattern then that's fine, as sample inflation will only ever
lower your p values, but you shouldn't trust an apparently significant
result from this kind of data.
To be honest, if it's minimum-number based the situation isn't great
either, since you're then dealing with estimates with a non-random,
asymmetrical error term.
Frankly, zooarchaeological data is a bit of a nightmare statistically
speaking. David
> You don't say how many elements you have, but whether it is one or more
> then I would have thought Chi-square and Fisher's test are entirely
> appropriate. Why are you worried about using them?
>
>
>>
>>Subject: [ZOOARCH] Statistics help
>> From: Melanie Fillios <[log in to unmask]>
>> Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:39:26 -0600
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Dear All, I'm hoping someone may be able to point me in the right
>> direction with some statistical analysis of an assemablage. In short, I
>> am comparing two stratigraphic units and would like to test whether
>> differences in element frequencies between the two units are
>> statistically significant. Could anyone tell me what type of test I
>> should be using? I've looked a using a Chi-square or Fisher's test, but
>> neither seem appropriate. As math is not my strong point, I may be
>> missing something.
>>
>>Thanks for the help!
>>
>>Melanie
>>
>>Dr. Melanie Fillios
>>University of Sydney
>>NSW, Australia 2006
>>[log in to unmask]
>
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