Argaric Sociology: Sex and Death

The detailed, rich and diverse Argaric funerary record offers an opportunity to explore social dimensions that usually remain elusive for prehistoric research, such us social rules on kinship rights and obligations, sexual tolerance and the role of funerary practices in preserving the economic and political organization. This paper addresses these topics through an analysis of the social meaning of Argaric double tombs by looking at body treatment and composition of grave goods assemblages according to gender and class affiliation. The Argaric seems to have been a conservative society, scarcely tolerant regarding homosexuality, and willing to celebrate ancestry associated to certain places as a means of asserting residence and property rights.

Calibration of assessment instruments – classification in mathematics at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano

Item Response Theory, IRT, is a valuable methodology for analyzing the quality of the instruments utilized in assessment of academic achievement. This article presents an implementation of the mentioned theory, particularly of the Rasch model, in order to calibrate items and the instrument used in the classification test for the Basic Mathematics subject at Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. 509 responses chains of students, obtained in the june 2011 application, were analyzed with a set of 45 items, through eight case studies that are showing progressive steps of calibration. Criteria of validity of items and of whole instrument were defined and utilized, to select groups of responses chains and items that were finally used in the determination of parameters which then allowed the classification of assessed students by the test.