alimantymelv/PCA-Stone-tools-MSACores

Sample code of PCA (incl data tranform, assumptions checking) of subset of PhD dataset. Dimension reduction of shape and technical attributes of Stone Age tools from East Africa. #Sample code and data from my PhD research on human evolution and behavioral change through the lense of technology. This is an exploratory data analysis looking at how variaiblity in one part of the stone tool kit is structured. The data is a subset of my East African Middle Stone Age (MSA) dataset and was collected during Museum research in Kenya and Ethiopia. It relates to a subgroup of stone tools, called cores, dating to the Middle and Late Pleistocene (~ 300 ka to ~ 50 ka). Attributes include shape indices, technological attributes about how the core was made, and contextual/grouping data. Unlike other regions of Africa, stone tool variaibility in the MSA is not strongly spatially and temporally structured as evident from the PCA plots (although there are subtle patterns in across different aspects of technology). Technological variability is spatially and temporally complex and influenced by multiple contextual factors. My wider PhD research indicates early modern humans had highly flexibile technologies at their disposal and the lack of strong spatial patterning has implications for moels of population dispersals and connectivity.