Misuse of Bayesian modelling in the Palaeolithic : the recent case of Ksar Akil in PNAS
Bayesian statistical modelling is an increasingly widely used method in chronometric analysis in archaeology and environmental science. Like most statistical techniques, it must be used cautiously and carefully, with the users being adequately trained. Inputing the wrong prior data in a Bayesian framework can result in outputs that are wrong and misleading. Over the last few years we have seen several cases where the authors of articles published in a range of important journ
Working at the Palaeolithic site of Ksar Akil, Lebanon
We had the opportunity in October 2014 to visit Lebanon and to go to the key site of Ksar Akil, at the ouskirts of Beirut. Ksar Akil is the reference site for the Upper Palaeolithic of the Near East. The initial excavators of the site in the 1930s and 40s discovered a deep 23 m sequence which they divided into 36 levels. In 1938, they discovered the skeleton of a modern human (called ‘Egbert’), sadly now lost, as well as the remains of another specimen (called ‘Ethelruda’), w
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