Techniques for assessing standardization in artifact assemblages: Can we scale material variability?

The study of artifact standardization is an important line of archaeologica l archaeological inquiry that continues to be plagued by the lack of an ind ependent scale that would indicate what a highly variable or highly standar dized assemblage should look like. Related to this problem is the absence o f a robust statistical technique for comparing variation between different kinds of assemblages. This paper addresses these issues. The Weber fraction for line-length estimation describes the minimum difference that humans ca n perceive through unaided visual inspection. This value is used to derive a constant for the coefficient of variation (CV = 1.7 percent) that represe nts the highest degree of standardization attainable through manual human p roduction of artifacts. Random data are used to define a second constant fo r the coefficient of variation that represents variation expected when prod uction is random (CV = 57.7 percent). These two constants can be used to as sess the degree of standardization in artifact assemblages regardless of ki nd. Our analysis further demonstrates that CV is an excellent measure of st andardization standardization and provides a robust statistical technique f or comparing standardization in samples of artifacts.