Archaeological Seriation by Correspondence Analysis: An Application to Historical Documents

Archaeological seriation has been applied to a sample of 314 medieval deeds, half undated and half dated (1259–1350), using similarities between the appearance of individual names in the deeds as the seriation features. This has allowed dates to be estimated for the undated deeds within a standard error of 5 years, and it has also identified the presence of a geographically based sub-group within the name population. The technique of Correspondence Analysis has been used for the seriation, and critical features of this technique are examined.