Burial environment

Child, A.M. 1995 Towards an understanding of the microbial decomposition of archaeological bone in the burial environment. Journal of Archaeological Science 22 165-174. 

Bones and teeth, however, are primary archaeological materials and are common to many archaeological sites. Bones bearing cut marks from stone tools are a clear proxy for human occupation of a site, and in the study of human evolution, hominid remains provide the primary archive material. Hence, many attempts have been made to directly date bones and teeth using the U-series method. Unlike calcite, however, bones and teeth are open systems. Living bone, for example, contains a few parts per billion (ppb) of Uranium, but archaeological bone may contain 1-100 parts per million (ppm) of Uranium, taken up from the burial environment. Implicit in the calculation of a date from °Th/U or Pa/ U is a model for this Uranium uptake, and the reliability of a U-series date is dependent on the validity of this uptake model. 

Figure 4. Modeled U-series date profiles across a 10 ky bone according to the D-A model under constant conditions. The dates are calculated using the closed system assumption. The parameter D/R is the diffusion-adsorption parameter and is related to the water content of the soil, the state of preservation of the bone and aspects of the geochemistry of the burial environment. After Pike et al. (2002). [Used by permission of Elsevier Science, from Pike et al. (2002), Geochim Cosmochim Acta, Vol. 66, Fig. 2, p. 4275.]...

Pollard A.M. (1998). The chemical nature of the burial environment. In Preserving Archaeological Remains In Situ, ed. Corfield, M., Hinton, P. Nixon, T. and Pollard, A.M., Museum of London Archaeology Service, London, pp. 60-65. 

Reiche, I., Favre-Quattropani, L., Calligaro, T., et al. (1999). Trace element composition of archaeological bones and postmortem alteration in the burial environment. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B 150 656-662. 

SEM is particularly useful when integrated with an energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), thereby allowing the determination of elemental composition of the materials that are also being observed and micrographed. Elemental composition of fibers and deposits has been studied in textiles from Etowah (51). The elemental composition reflects their burial environment in association with copper as well as their constituent plant fibers. Rowe (52) applied this technique successfully to pigments used in rock art, and it has been used in the study of archaeological fibers (11, 53-55). 

In addition to contact with the burial environment, the trophy head samples had been burned, presumably during ritual activities in the structures in which they were found (/, 21, 22). Although experimental data has shown that postmortem burning can change the 5I3C values in bone collagen, this is not the case for strontium isotope ratios (78). 

Although cementation is a process that can occur throughout the life of a sedimentary carbonate body, the dominant processes and types of cements produced generally differ substantially between those formed in the shallow-meteoric and deep-burial environments. Mineralogic stabilization (i.e., dissolution of magnesian calcites and aragonite, see Chapter 7) commonly drives cement formation during the early shallow-burial period, whereas the previously discussed processes of pressure solution and neomorphism are more important in the deep-burial environment. The pore waters in which cementation takes place also tend to differ substantially between the two environments. In shallow subsurface environments, cementation usually takes place in dilute meteoric waters that are oxic to only... 

Choquette P.W. and James N.P. (1987) Diagenesis 12. Diagenesis in limestones-3. The deep burial environment. Geoscience Canada 14,3-35. 

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