Methodological Issues in the Study of Assemblage Diversity

Abstract

Three approaches that have been used to investigate assemblage diversity in the archaeological literature-two established and one new-are studied, with a particular emphasis on assemblage richness. It is argued that the established regression and simulation approaches, as often used, are only strictly valid if they assume what they are supposed to test-namely that assemblages are sampled from populations with the same richness or structure. Rarefaction methodology provides an alternative to the simulation approach and suggests that even if the latter is used, sampling without rather than with replacement is preferable. Some potential limitations of a recently proposed approach using jackknife methods are noted, and it is suggested that bootstrapping may be a more natural resampling method to use.