Archaeologists often use data and quantitative statistical methods to evaluate their ideas. Although there are various statistical frameworks for decision-making in archaeology and science in general, in this chapter, we provide a simple explanation of Bayesian statistics. To contextualize the Bayesian statistical framework, we briefly compare it to the more widespread null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) approach. We also provide a simple example to illustrate how archaeologists use data and the Bayesian framework to compare hypotheses and evaluate their uncertainty. We then review how archaeologists have applied Bayesian statistics to solve research problems related to radiocarbon dating and chronology, lithic, ceramic, zooarchaeological, bioarchaeological, and spatial analyses. Because recent work has reviewed Bayesian applications in archaeology from the 1990s up to 2017, this work considers the relevant literature published since 2017.
