Professor
Caitlin
Buck

School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Professor

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Professor Caitlin Buck
Profile picture of Professor Caitlin Buck
c.e.buck@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 3715

Full contact details

Professor Caitlin Buck
School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences

Hicks Building
Hounsfield Road

Sheffield

S3 7RH

Profile

Prof Buck has a BSc in Archaeological Science (1987, Bradford) and a PhD in Statistics (1994, Nottingham). Her research interests lie in the applications of Bayesian statistics to archaeology and palaeoenvironmental science. She is best known for her seminal work in Bayesian radiocarbon dating which is widely held to have revolutionised archaeological chronology construction. 

Research interests

Drawing on experience in archaeology, palaeoenvironmental science and Bayesian statistics, Prof Buck works with teams of other experts from a range of fields to develop statistical models, methods and software. Previous and current work includes:

  • analysis of field survey data from Britain and Greece.
  • provenancing archaeological ceramics via multivariate chemical compositional data.
  • calibration and interpretation of radiocarbon determinations.
  • developing models and methods for estimating radiocarbon calibration curves.
  • modelling relative archaeological chronologies (seriation).
  • analysis of the structure of prehistoric corbelled domes.
  • Bayesian tephrochronology.
  • Bayesian approaches to palaeoclimate reconstruction.
  • models for the (re-)colonisation of landscapes in response to past climate change.
  • models for ice cores and lake/ocean sediments.
  • graphical theoretic approaches to describing and analysing archaeological stratigraphy.
Publications

Show: Featured publications All publications

Books

Journal articles

All publications

Books

  • O'Hagan A, Buck CE, Daneshkhah A, Eiser JR, Garthwaite PH, Jenkinson DJ, Oakley JE & Rakow T (2006) Uncertain Judgements: Eliciting Experts' Probabilities. Wiley. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE & Millard A (2004) Tools for Constructing Chronologies Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries. Springer Science & Business Media. RIS download Bibtex download
  • (2004) Tools for Constructing Chronologies. Springer London. RIS download Bibtex download
  • (2000) U.K. Chapter of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology: Proceedings of the Fourth Meeting, Cardiff University, 27 and 28 February 1999. Oxford: Archaeopress, British Archaeological Reports, International Series 844. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE, Cavanagh WG & Litton CD (1996) The Bayesian Approach to Interpreting Archaeological Data. Chichester: Wiley. RIS download Bibtex download
  • LITTON CD & BUCK CE (1995) THE BAYESIAN APPROACH TO THE INTERPRETATION OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA. Wiley. RIS download Bibtex download

Journal articles

Book chapters

Conference proceedings

  • Buck CE, Christen JA & James GN (1999) Towards BCal: an on-line Bayesian radiocarbon calibration facility. Actes du 3ème colloque C14 et Archéologie, Lyon, 6-10 Avril 1998 (pp 113-117). Mémoires de la Société Française Tome 26 et Supplément de la Revue d’Archéométrie RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE (1995) Radiocarbon dating: problem definition and sample selection. Science and Site (pp 1-11) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE & Litton CD (1993) Applications of the Bayesian paradigm to archaeological data analysis. Actes du XIIe Congrés International des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques, Part I (pp 367-374) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE (1993) The provenancing of archaeological ceramics: a Bayesian approach. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 1992 (pp 293-301). Aarhus RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE, Cavanagh WG & Litton CD (1992) Tools for the interpretation of soil phosphate data from archaeological field surveys. Geoprospection in the Archaeological Landscape (pp 75-87). Oxford RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE & Litton CD (1991) A computational Bayes approach to some common archaeological problems. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 1990 (pp 93-100) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE, Cavanagh WG & Litton CD (1990) Image segmentation methods for archaeological field survey data. New Tools from Mathematical Archaeology (pp 55-68). Warsaw, Poland RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE & Litton CD (1989) Image segmentation techniques for archaeological geochemical data. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 1989 (pp 121-131) RIS download Bibtex download
  • Buck CE, Cavanagh WG & Litton CD (1988) The spatial analysis of site phosphate data. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 1988 (pp 151-160) RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Research group

Mathematical and Statistical Modelling

Grants

Current grants, as Principal Investigator

 
Heritage Data Analytics: Sustainable strategies for large and complex stratigraphic and chronometric dataAHRC
Past grants, as Principal Investigator 
Uncertainty in Palaeoclimate International NetworkLeverhulme
Statistical Support for BAS Palaeoclimate StudiesBAS
Tools for constructing chronologies: crossing disciplinary boundariesNERC

Past grants, as Coinvestigator

 
The future of the past: A robust framework for the upgrade and development of the international radiocarbon calibration/comparison curves (IntCal)NERC
Out of Asia / A New Framework for Dating the Spread of Agriculture in EuropeNERC
The future of the past: A robust framework for the upgrade and development of the international radiocarbon calibration/comparison curves 
Teaching activities
MAS106Mathematics Core 
MAS2001Mathematics Core II 
MAS6041Dissertation