Mixture model of pottery distributions from Lake Chad Basin archaeological sites reveals ancient segregation patterns

Abstract

We present a new statistical approach to analyzing an extremely common archaeological data type -- potsherds -- that infers the structure of cultural relationships across a set of excavations. This method, applied to data from a set of complex, culturally heterogeneous sites around the Mandara mountains in the Lake Chad Basin, articulates currently understood cultural succession into the Iron Age. We show how the approach can be integrated with radiocarbon dates to provide detailed portraits of cultural dynamics and deposition patterns within single excavations that, in this context, indicate historical ethnolinguistic segregation patterns. We conclude with a discussion of the many possible model extensions using other archaeological data types.