# Extending aion

## N. Frerebeau

### 2026-02-05

    library(aion)
    library(methods)

aion offers a simple API that can be extended and used by other specialized packages.

The following packages rely on aion:

- ananke (quantitative chronology in archaeology).
- kairos v2.0 (analysis of chronological patterns from archaeological count data).
- ArchaeoPhases v2.0 (post-processing of MCMC simulations for chronological modelling).

# 1 Epochs

An epoch is an instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era. With aion, you can work with different Gregorian calendar epochs: `BC()`, `BCE()`, `AD()`, `CE()`, `BP()`, `b2k()`.

It is also possible to create objects representing specific epochs of the Gregorian calendar. Simply create a `GregorianCalendar` class object:

    ## Years since 753 BC (the traditional founding of Rome)
    AUC <- new(
      Class = "GregorianCalendar",
      label = "AUC",               # Abbreviated label
      name = "Ab urbe condita",    # Name of the time scale
      epoch = 753,                 # Epoch from which years are counted
      direction = 1L               # Count years forwards from epoch
    )

    AUC
    #> Ab urbe condita (AUC): Années grégoriennes comptées à partir de 753

# 2 Calendars and Dates

The following example is used to build a simple solar calendar with 365 days each year and no leap-year rule. This is the ancient Egyptian calendar. You will find full details of the calculations and detailed explanations in Reingold and Dershowitz (2018, p. 29).

You can define additional calendars by creating S4 classes that inherit from the `TimeScale` class exported by aion:

    ## Egyptian calendar
    E <- setClass(
      Class = "EgyptianCalendar",
      prototype = list(
        name = "Egyptian",
        fixed = -272787,
        direction = 1L,
        year = 365
      ),
      contains = "TimeScale"
    )

Once the calendar has been defined, you need to build methods for converting rata die to and from this calendar:

    ## Convert Egyptian dates to rata die
    ## NB: this method MUST return a RataDie object
    setMethod(
      f = "fixed",
      signature = c(
        year = "numeric",
        month = "numeric",
        day = "numeric",
        calendar = "EgyptianCalendar"
      ),
      definition = function(year, month, day, calendar) {
        rd <- calendar_fixed(calendar) +
          365 * (year - 1) +
          30 * (month - 1) +
          day - 1

        as_fixed(rd)
      }
    )

    ## Convert rata die to Egyptian dates
    ## NB: this method MUST return a data.frame
    setMethod(
      f = "as_date",
      signature = c(object = "numeric", calendar = "EgyptianCalendar"),
      definition = function(object, calendar) {
        day <- object - calendar_fixed(calendar)
        year <- day %/% 365 + 1
        month <- (day %% 365) %/% 30 + 1
        day <- day - 365 * (year - 1) - 30 * (month - 1) + 1

        data.frame(year = year, month = month, day = day)
      }
    )

    ## Convert rata die to Egyptian years
    setMethod(
      f = "as_year",
      signature = c(object = "numeric", calendar = "EgyptianCalendar"),
      definition = function(object, calendar, ...) {
        (object - calendar_fixed(calendar)) %/% 365 + 1
      }
    )

Now you can use your calendar:

    ## Create a calendar object
    cal <- E()

    ## Convert 161/7/15 in rata die
    fixed(
      year = 161,
      month = 7,
      day = 15,
      calendar = cal
    )
    #> Rata die : nombre de jours depuis le 01-01-01 (grégorien)
    #> [1] -214193

    ## Convert -214193 r.d. to an Egyptian date
    as_date(-214193, calendar = cal)
    #>   year month day
    #> 1  161     7  15

The definition of new calendars, combined with the Julian and Gregorian calendars already included in aion, allows you to build conversion tools:

    ## Build a conversion function from Gregorian CE years to Egyptian years
    Gregorian_to_Egyptian <- convert(CE(), E())

    ## Convert 2023 (Gregorian) to the Egyptian calendar
    Gregorian_to_Egyptian(2023)
    #> [1] 2771

# 3 Time Series

A time series object is simply an \(n \times m \times p\) `array`, with \(n\) being the number of observations, \(m\) being the number of series and with the \(p\) columns of the third dimension containing extra variables for each series. This `array` comes with an extra `time` slot that store the observations times expressed in rata die. You can create classes that inherits from the `TimeSeries` class.

As an example, you can create a class that represent the results of the calibration of radiocarbon dates (this code comes from the ananke package):

    .CalibratedAges <- setClass(
      Class = "CalibratedAges",
      slots = c(
        ages = "numeric",     # Stores the radiocarbon ages to be calibrated
        errors = "numeric",   # Store the standard deviation of the radiocarbon ages
        curves = "character"  # Store the name of the calibration curve
      ),
      contains = "TimeSeries"
    )

All methods defined in aion can then be used on objects belonging to this new class (e.g. `plot()`).

# References

Reingold, Edward M., and Nachum Dershowitz. 2018. Calendrical Calculations: The Ultimate Edition. 4th ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781107415058.