Some archaeological applications of kernel density estimates

Kernel density estimates, which at their simplest can be Viewed as a smoothed form of histogram, have been widely studied in the statistical literature in recent years but used hardly at all within archaeology. They provide an effective method of data presentation for univariate and particularly bivariate data and this is illustrated with a range of examples. The methodology can be used as an informal approach to spatial cluster analysis, and one example suggests that it is competetitive with other approaches in this area. A reason for the lack of use of kernel density estimates by archaeologists may be the lack of accessible software. The analyses described here were undertaken in the MATLAB package using routines developed by the second author, and are available on request. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.