Materials, archaeological characteristics

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). 

Common ancient ceramic materials often found in archaeological excavations, such as fired brick and pottery, were made mostly from a mixture of a secondary clay and fillers. The nature, composition, and properties of clay have been already discussed the nature of the fillers, the changes undergone by the clay as well as by the fillers during their conversion to ceramics, and the unique properties of ceramic materials, are reviewed in the following pages. Attention is drawn also to studies that provide information on the composition and characteristics of ancient ceramic materials. 

The study of F in archaeological materials is mostly focussed on bone materials or flints. Therefore, this paper is mainly dedicated to the study of these materials and their potential for revealing information on the past some applications of F studies in obsidian and teeth are also mentioned. The following examples illustrate the importance of the chemical and isotopic analysis for archaeological studies, in general. Prior to the presentation of F studies in archaeological bone material and flint, it is important to review their main characteristics in order to be able to adequately evaluate the output and limits of investigations. 

Perhaps the most immediate impact on archaeological applications of dating using TAMS has been the major decrease in the amount of organic materials required for a determination. Even at this stage in the development of the technology, reductions of two or more orders of magnitude have been obtained. Our analysis of the Sunnyvale bone sample vividly illustrated the importance of this characteristic of TAMS... 

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