Modelling Identities: A Case Study from the Iron Age of South-East Europe

This volume investigates the construction of group identity in Late La Tène South-East Europe using an innovative statistical modelling method. Death and burial theory underlies the potential of mortuary practices for identity research. The sample used for this volumes's research consists of 370 graves, organized in a specially crated database that records funerary ritual; and grave-good information.  In the case of grave-goods, this involved found hierarchically organized categorical variables, which serve to describe each item by combining functional and typological features.

The volume also aims to show the compatibility of archaeological theory and statistical modelling. The discussions from archaeological theory rarely find methodological implementations through statistical methods.  In this volume, theoretical issues form an integrative part of data preparation, method development and result interpretation.

Cătălin Popa is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Leiden. He received his B.A. from the Babeș-Bolyai Unviersity and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. (2014) from the University of Cambridge. From 2014 until 2016 he was a Dahlem Research School Postdoctoral Fellow in the Excellence Cluster Topoi, Freie Universität Berlin. Much of his research has been concentrated on the integration of archaeological theory with statistical methods, particularly when applied to issues of identity and landscape. He also has a broad interests in European Prehistory, particularly the Iron Age period. He is additionally working on the relationship between archaeology and nationalism, exploring the instrumentalisation and mythologisation of the past for national purposes or various political aims.