Hello 👋

R

Pronounced /’Arrrgh/

GIPHY

Why R?

Because it’s the best!

End of presentation.

Artwork by @allison_horst.

Why R?

R is a free and open source software environment for statistical computing and graphics

There are 20000+ available packages on CRAN

The R community is pretty cool

Artwork by @allison_horst.

Why R(chaeology)?

Seems to be the most popular

Batist & Roe (2024). DOI: 10.11141/ia.67.13

Why RStudio?

RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) specifically for R

It provides a bunch of extra features to make using R a delight!

tidyverse

The tidyverse is a collection of R packages sharing the same data science philosophy

It provides a nice workflow for cleaning, visualising, and transforming data

Aspects of ‘base R’ will also be covered

About the materials

It is not enough to cover all important topics.

It is enough to teach you how to find answers and implement them yourself.

The datasets: Sheep Astragali

Sheep astragulus morphology from Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean.

nmar79. (2023). nmar79/Med_Sheep_Astragals: v0.1 (v0.1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10276147

The datasets: Sheep Astragali

column	description
specID	Specimen ID
Taxon	Taxon
Site	Site code: DOR = Dor; KSN = Keisan; ABM = ABM (see group)
Zone	Zone: Coastal, inland, or Cyprus
Period	Time period: IA2 = Iron age; PER = Persian
group	Dor = southern Levant sample Iron Age 2 Tel Dor; Keisan = southern Levant sample Iron Age 2 and Persian Tell Keisan; southern Levant sample ABM = Iron Age 2 Abel Beth Maacah; LTD = Cypriot sample from Archaic-Classical Lingrin tou Digeni
GLl	Greatest length lateral astragalus measurement
Bd	Greatest breadth of distal end astragalus measurement
Dl	Greatest depth lateral astragalus measurement

The datasets: Kiwulan Burials

Burial data from northeastern Taiwan ranging from the Iron Age through the European colonization period.

Li-Ying Wang & Ben Marwick, (2021). Compendium of R code and data for “A Bayesian networks approach to infer social changes from burials in northeastern Taiwan during the European colonization period”. Accessed 23 Aug 2021. Online at https://osf.io/xga6n/

The datasets: Kiwulan Burials

Variable	Description
Layer	Layer of the grave. 1 = Upper culture layer; 2 = Lower culture layer.
ID	Unique identifier of burials
Burial_axis	Not sure. Not relevant
Degree_axis	Not sure. Not relevant
Condition	Condition of the burial. 1 = complete; 2 = partial disturbed; 3 = severe disturbed; 4 = unidentified.
Gender	Biological sex of the skeletal remains. 1 = Male; 2 = Probable Male; 3 = Female; 4 = Probable Female.
Age	Age-at-death of the skeletal remains. 1 = infant (0-2 years); 2 = child (3-12 years); 3 = teenager (12-20 years); 4 = young adult(20-35 years); 5 = middle adult (35-50 years); 6 = old adult (50+); 7 = adult (20+); 8 = approximate adult
Length	Length of burial
Width	Width of burial
Height	Height of burial