Statistical Analyses on Bioarchaeological Materials: Comparison between the Subsistence Economies in Tepe Sagzabad and Haftavan Tepe during the Iron Age

In this paper we compare the subsistence economies based on the study of the faunal remains of two Iron Age settlements, Haftavan Tepe and Sagzabad in two different environments in northwestern Iran. These two examples are used to illustrate the use of various statistical methods in archaeozoology to test the significance of the quantitative and qualitative data. This analysis includes various measures for bone count and also for testing the morphological variability in various animal populations. By using Chi- Squared test, we show that although the two assemblages are very different is size, they still can be compared. In both Haftavan Tepe and Sagzabad, cattle is an important component of the subsistence economy. We compared these two populations geographically distant. With a Student t test we demonstrate the existence of two morphologically different cattle population during the Iron Age in northern part of the Iranian Plateau. In this paper, we aimed at demonstrating the importance of statistical methods in anthropological discussions.