This page houses several related data sets and the program used to calculate Binford’s environmental and hunter-gatherer frames of reference variables (as developed in Binford, Lewis R. 2001. Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Ethnographic and Environmental Data Sets University of California Press, Berkeley).
Click here to go to publisher’s page for this book.
Binford’s hunter-gatherer data includes more than 200 variables coding aspects of hunter-gatherer subsistence, mobility, and social organization for 339 ethnographically documented groups of hunter-gatherers. The files in this section include a few of the environmental variables that were found to be most useful in pattern recognition, but these represent a small subset of the total number of calculated variables. Doug White and Anthon Eff helped get these data organized to share AND added variables from GIS and other sources to Binford’s original recorded, coded, and calculated variables for the 339 hunter-gatherer cases included in Constructing Frames of Reference.
Codebook
See the LRBcodebook.txt for complete description of each variable. [Open in Excel or WordPad for easy to read format.]
Data files
LRB.csv has recorded, coded, and some calculated variables for Binford’s 339 case file. Code values are represented as values. This is Binford’s basic data set as ammended by White & Eff.
LRBfact.csv is the same as LRB.csv except code values are represented by their label, rather than the code.
LRBkey.csv has information about each variable in the file including frequencies not missing, the source data set, description of the variable, and type of measure.
NOTE: While giving workshops on using these frames of reference in Argentina, I became aware of a problem translating csv files into Excel in Argentina [seems to be associated with difference of use of . and , in numbers, and so is probably a problem beyond Argentina]. Here are Excel versions of the .csv files above:
LRB.xlsx has recorded, coded, and some calculated variables for Binford’s 339 case file. Code values are represented as values. This is Binford’s basic data set as ammended by White & Eff.
LRBfact.xlsx is the same as LRB.xlsx except code values are represented by their label, rather than the code.
LRBkey.xlsx has information about each variable in the file including frequencies not missing, the source data set, description of the variable, and type of measure.
Program to calculate environmental and hunter-gatherer frames of reference
When I was in graduate school, I worked as Binford’s research assistant (1994-1997). During that time, we did most of the work of developing the computer program that calculates the variables used in his book. The original program was written in the ObjectPal language (used by the Paradox (c) database). It was completed in 1996.
In 2002, Lew and I were married, he retired from SMU and moved to Kirksville, MO where I was already teaching. Shortly thereafter, Lew “passed the baton” and asked me to keep the program up to date and figure out how to make it and his data sets more available.
In 2006, with the help of computer science and anthropology students from Truman State University, we completed a conversion of the program into Java (EnvCalc v.2). The Java version of the program was updated again in 2014 to import/ export comma delimited files (EnvCalc v2.1).
This program facilitates large scale (particularly global and large regional) comparisons of ethnographic and archaeological data (but could also be used for ecological studies at different scales) by using basic weather station and geographic data as input values into a series of equations that calculate standardized values of a wide range of both (a) environmental properties and (b) modeled or projected properties of hunter-gatherer systems given those environmental values. For the most detailed discussion of the strategy, see Binford 2001: chapters 4 & 5 (reference above).
You only need to run the program if you want to use new locations for input data (or explore to see how the program works).
Binford had two primary data sets: (1) 339 ethnographically documented hunter-gatherer cases from a wide range of environments around the world, and (2) a sample of 1429 world weather stations selected to be proportional to the area of the Earth found in each of 28 main vegetation types (Eyre’s vegetation classification – see information about input data for details).
Complete frames of reference data is available here as .csv files for Binford’s primary data sets:
339 hunter-gatherer cases output as comma separated value file [.csv] [see NOTE]
1429 world weather stations output as comma separated value file [.csv] [see NOTE]
NOTE: While giving workshops on using these frames of reference in Argentina, I became aware of a problem translating csv files into Excel in Argentina [seems to be associated with difference of use of . and , in numbers, and so is probably a problem beyond Argentina]. Here are Excel versions of the .csv files above:
Complete frames of reference data is available here as .xlsx files for Binford’s primary data sets:
339 hunter-gatherer cases output as Excel file [.xlsx]
1429 world weather stations output as Excel file [.xlsx]
[NOTE: The complete frames of reference data may be overwhelming; see the frames of reference documentation for a list of calculated/ modeled/ projected variables and what they measure. You can select to receive output only for specific sets of variables by running the input data (see below) through the program.]
I have organized and run data for many more than 1429 weather stations, particularly in N America. I am working on a set of additional data files that will be available here soon. [email: ajohnson@truman.edu about availability of these data before you spend a lot of time organizing new weather station data to run through the program]
The EnvCalc2.1 program is available for anyone who would like to run their own data through the frames of reference calculations. This is an executable JAR file (JAVA).
EnvCalc2.1 by Binford, Lewis R. and Amber L. Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing ajohnson@truman.edu
To run on your computer, you will need version 7 or higher of Java runtime environment. To go to the official site where you can download or update free JAVA software, click here.
EnvCalc Input files for Binford’s primary data sets are linked here.
339 hunter-gatherer cases input as comma separated values [.csv] file [see NOTE]
1429 world weather stations input as comma separated values [.csv] file [see NOTE]
For your convenience, here is an input template [.csv] with a couple example records to guide data collection. [see NOTE]
NOTE: While giving workshops on using these frames of reference in Argentina, I became aware of a problem translating csv files into Excel in Argentina [seems to be associated with difference of use of . and , in numbers, and so is probably a problem beyond Argentina]. Here are Excel versions of the .csv files above:
339 hunter-gatherer cases input as Excel [.xlsx] file
1429 world weather stations input as Excel [.xlsx] file
Here is an input template [.xlsx] with a couple example records to guide data collection. [NOTE: If you use the .xlsx version of the input template to organize data, you will need to save it as a .csv file before running it through the EnvCalc 2.1 program.]
For detailed information on input data, click here.
NOTE: Here is a brief users guide that should help you develop an input file and check your data to ensure it is complete before running it through the program. Make sure you have values entered for every record for every required input field. If you are working with data from the tropical or desert environments, it is possible you will run into problems with temperature and/or rainfall data that is not variable enough to calculate some variables. If so, see related notes in users guide.