ChronoModel
Marie-Anne Vibet
Anne Philippe
Laboratoire de mathématiques Jean Leray, Univ. Nantes
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Modeling in archaeology - what for ?
? Dating one or several archaeological events using both a set of
contemporaneous artefacts and an archaeological context
? Constructing chronologies
? Estiming the duration of an archaeological phase
Example : Bouquets of Sennefer’s tomb, "Mayor of the city"
(Thebes) during the 18ième dynasty
Dating one of the three phases of Sennefer’s burial using radiocarbon
dates made on the Bouquets found at the entrance of the tomb and
historical information.
Ref : Quiles et al. Bayesian modelling of an absolute chronology for Egypt’s
18th Dynasty by astrophysical and radiocarbon methods. Journal of
Archaeological Science, 2013, 40, 423–432
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ChronoModel - The Event model
Modeling steps
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What is an event ?
? In ChronoModel, an event refers to the date of an archaeological
event determined by a collection of contemporaneous archaeological
objects which are dated using different methods such as radiocarbon,
thermoluminescence, archaeomagnetism, etc.
–> You will need to define what an event represents in your own
project, that is in a particular period of time, a particular geographic
area ...
Example : Bouquets of Sennefer’s tomb
Archaeological event : Sennefer’s burial
Dated event : The death of flowers that constituted the bouquets
In this first modeling, each bouquet was associated with an event, that
is the death of flowers of each bouquet was estimated separately.
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Including prior information
? Information coming from historic (or geologic, environnemental, ...)
knowledges or from the archaeological site.
? Study period :
Hypothesis : the event’s date belongs to the study period.
Without any further information, the event’s date is assumed to be
uniformly distributed on the study period.
? Constraint :
Temporal order
For instance stratification or anteriority - posterity relationship
? Boundary :
Events may be bounded before (or after) a historical date.
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Example (cont.)
Prior information available for the bouquets of Sennefer’s tomb
? Study period :
18th Egyptian dynasty
• Let’s take -1700 à -1000
? Prior information about the historical context :
"The archaeological material found inside the tomb shows three burial
phases. They occurred between the beginning of the reign of
Tutankhamun and the beginning of the reign of Horemheb"
• Addition of two bounds corresponding to the beginning of each
reign (-1356, -1312)
• Addition of temporal order constraints between events and
bounds
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ChronoModel implementation
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Including measurements
? Datations (or measurements)
Archaeological objects found on the site. Samples collected.
Datation of these samples by one or several methods (radiocarbon,
thermoluminescence, archeomagnetism ...)
Convertion into calendar dates using a calibration process.
? Example of the bouquets of Sennefer’s tomb
Measurements :
2 bouquets found at the entrance of the tomb
6 datations by radiocarbon per bouquet
Use of the calibration reference curve intcal09.14c
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Modeling with ChronoModel - Including
observations
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Bayesian modeling
PRIOR information OBSERVATIONS
Historical context and / or Measurements (datations)
context from the site C14, TL/OSL, AM, ...
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POSTERIOR information
Summary : posterior distribution, mean (MEAN), maximum a
posteriori (MAP), the smallest credibility interval (CI), highest
probability density region (HPD)
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Posterior densities
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Posterior summaries
The line above the curve represents the smallest credible interval.
The HPD region is presented by the colored area under the curve.
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Posterior densities - Bouquet 1
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Archaeological phases
Modeling of a phase
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What is a phase ?
? In ChronoModel, a phase gathers several events on the basis of one
or several geographical criteria, one or several environnemental
criteria, ...
No hypothesis is made according to the position/distribution of events
in a phase.
? Example : The bouquets of Sennefer’s tomb
Phase : Sennefer’s burial.
• All bouquets are gathered in a phase.
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ChronoModel implementation
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Including prior information
? Information about the duration of a phase :
a phase may last at most x year
? Temporal order between two phases :
all the events of the first phase happened before those of the second
phase.
? Hiatus between two phases :
the time elapsed between two phases was at least of x year.
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Posterior information
A phase is characterised by its beginning, its end and its duration.
? The beginning :
α = minimum(θj, j=1...r )
? The end :
β = maximum(θj, j=1...r )
? The duration :
τ = β−α
Summary : posterior distribution, mean (MEAN), maximum a
posteriori (MAP), the smallest credibility interval (CI), highest
probability density region (HPD)
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Posterior densities related to a phase
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