Archaeological materials provenance

Most of the essential information on archaeological materials is derived, at the present time, using physical methods of analysis. This may include the qualitative or quantitative assessment of their composition, their provenance, the techniques used for their production, and their age. Some of the most widely used methods of chemical analysis based on physical principles are succinctly reviewed in the following paragraphs. 

Although chemical analysis of archaeological materials for purposes of identification and provenance is now well established, there are still many challenges ahead for the inorganic chemist in archaeology. The field of lead... 

ICP spectroscopy has been applied in quantitative elemental analysis in forensic examinations (57), and for such issues as the determination of source provenance based on these data for materials such as ochre (58) or other pigments. Speakman et al. (59) report on the characterization of archaeological materials with LA-ICP-MS, while others analyzed pigments successfully on pottery from the American Southwest (60), including the Mesa Verde region (61) among others. 

The use of trace element analysis to determine the provenance of archaeological materials has expanded rapidly in the last decade. It is now a well-established technique for the identification of obsidian source deposits (J), and is nearly as established for turquoise (2), steatite (3), and some ceramic materials (4). Native copper has received much less attention. Friedman et al. (5), Fields et al. (6), and Bowman et al. (7) used trace element analyses to determine the type of geological ore from which copper was extracted. However, only our efforts (8) and the work of Goad and Noakes (9) have focused on collecting and analyzing native copper from all potential deposits of a given region to provide a data base for statistical comparison with artifact trace element compositions. 

Neff, H., Cogswell, J.W., Ross, L.M. Jr. (2003) Supple5menting bulk chemistry in archaeological ceramic provenance investigations. In Patterns and Process Essays in Honor of Dr. Edward V. Sayre, edited by van Zelst, L., Bishop, R.L. Washington, DC Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education Publication Series, pp. 201-234. 

The nature and the relative amounts of the impurities in many natural and in some synthetic materials, are often characteristic of the geographic area where the materials occur or were made. This is of particular interest in archaeological studies, since determining the nature and the relative amounts of impurities in many materials allows one to determine their provenance (Maniatis 2004 Guerra and Calligaro 2003). 

The isotopes of many elements (see Textbox 12) provide important tools for obtaining information on many archaeological investigations their use may enable researchers, for example, to determine the provenance (see Textbox 30) or the age of materials (see Textboxes 15 and 16), calculating ancient temperatures (see Textbox 47), or elucidating the nature of the ancient diets of human beings as well as of animals (see Textbox 59). 

Freestone, I. C. (2005), The provenance of ancient glass through compositional analysis, in Vandiver, P. B., J. L. Mass, and A. Murray (eds.), Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology VII (Symposium, November 30-December 3, 2004, Boston, Massachusetts), Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings, Vol. 852, Materials Research Society, Warrendale, Pennsylvania. 

The main problem with organic analyses from archaeological remains is their state of conservation. The question to be answered is whether any organic materials can be preserved over centuries or millennia. Many authors have proven that in certain conditions, preservation is possible [Evershed etalA992, Regert et al. 2003]. The question is of course very relevant in the case of dinosaur remains. In the case of preservation of organic materials, ToF-SIMS is well suited for such a study, because samples are very small and... 

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