Provenience

To trace the provenience of alkanesulfonates to the technical manufacturing process the content of chloro organics needs to be determined. The presence... 

Asaro, F., F. H. Stross, and R. L. Burger (2002), Breakthrough in Precision (0.3 percent) of Neutron Activation Analyses Applied to Provenience Studies of Obsidian, paper LBNL-51330, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA. 

Perlman, I. and J. Yellin (1980), The provenience of obsidian from Neolithic sites in Israel, Israel Explor. ]. 30, 83-88. 

Total specimens for the seven reference units are given, by site provenience, in Table 3. The units are represented in five dimensional discriminant space, the coordinates for the first two dimensions being shown in figure 4. These two vectors account for 72 percent of the total discriminant power. For convenience, approximate territorial lines have been added to the plot. Apparently representing the compositional pattern of locally made Palenque pottery, units 1 and 2 are enclosed within a single territorial boundary. Less well represented but, as will be seen, of considerable interest for the incesario problem, is unit 7, which relates primarily to the site of Xupa. Observable separation of units 3, 4, and 5 is possible only when utilizing additional discriminant functions beyond the first and second. In... 

Table 3. Provenience Distribution within the Seven Reference Units (non-incensario ceramics).

Table 5. Incensario Form Class and Provenience Distribution...

Figure 9. lncensarios and other ceramics of Xupa provenience shown relative to the first two discriminant axes defined for the seven reference units. Key S, cylindrical support P, pedestals ... 

The most intense NAA study of archaeological ceramics has been focused on the Bronze Age Mycenaean and Minoan pottery of Greece and Crete, and related areas around the eastern Mediterranean (Mommsen et al. 2002). This work began in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s with the work of Perlman and Asaro (1969), who went on to analyze 878 shards of pottery. The results were never fully published according to Asaro and Perlman (1973, 213), the question of provenience of the vast quantities of Mycenaean wares has... 

Asaro, F. and Perlman, I. (1973). Provenience studies of Mycenean pottery employing neutron activation analysis. In Acts of the International Archaeological Symposium The Myceneans in the Eastern Mediterranean , Nicosia 27th March-2nd April 1972, Cyprus, Nicosia, Department of Antiquities, pp. 213-224. 

Beck, C. W. (1995). The provenience analysis of amber. American Journal of Archaeology 99 125-127. 

For QSAR model building purposes, the Cox2 inhibitor set was split into a learning set (LS, 80% of compounds) and a Validation set (VS, 20%). Splitting was done so as to ensure an equivalent relative distribution of actives and inactives throughout both sets, and ignoring the original provenience of the compounds. These sets were used to train and validate two types of linear QSAR approaches ... 

The molecular weight distribution of rag papers from four centuries is shown in Fig. 17. The highest Mw in this example was observed for the oldest paper. Endurance and stability of rag paper is highly influenced by the provenience of the material, the papermaking procedure and the storage conditions. Thus, no conclusion as to the age can be drawn from the molecular weight distributions measured. 

Elemental Compositions of Spanish and Spanish-Colonial Majolica Ceramics in the Identification of Provenience... 

The usefulness of neutron activation analysis in assisting the archaeologist to establish the provenience of potsherd material is illustrated by... 

Provenience of Obsidian from Neolithic Sites in Israel, Israel Exploration... 

Mosandl [313, 314] has found 8 C-values from -33.6 to -34.9%c for 2,5-dimethyl-4-methoxy-2H-furan-3-one ( mesifuran ) and -23.7 to -26.8%c for 2,5-dimethyl-4-hydroxy-2H-furan-3-one ( furaneol ) from strawberries. This difference, even found in products from the same source, suggests independent biosyntheses. Another natural sample of mesifuran showed a very positive 8 C-value (-18.5%c), which indicates its origin from a CAM-plant (pineapple). However, the recent data by Preston et al. [207] show that furaneol from this provenience can, but must not have quite positive 8 C-values. This and the seeming coincidence of the data for natural and nature-identical mesifurane show that the situation with these compounds is still not quite clear. 

Other studies on stones beyond identification and provenience studies include microscopic studies of use-wear and analysis of possible residues for DNA or other, biologically distinctive organic molecules, which will be separately discussed in a later section. 

Unlike chemical provenience studies of geological materials, the compositions of which normally remain unchanged by human choices, the composition of ceramics are the result of human choice, making the interpretation of such chemical data much more problematic. Potters at a given location can and do choose different recipes for different pots with different functions or styles. For example, water jars from Veracruz can give a different mix of clays and tempers for the base of the jar, for the filter, and for the funnel at the top, giving three different compositions for the same vessel. 

Potters at the village of Paquime, in northern Mexico, mix as many as seven different clays for the paste of a single vessel thus there could be huge compositional variation depending upon the personal choices of individual potters. Thus the Provenience Postulate, i.e., that compositional variation within a production location will be less than that among different locations, could be false and should actually be tested for its validity. 

It should also always be kept in mind that ceramics are the products of diverse human technologies, not geological materials, and their compositions reflect human choices rather than simply that of a geographic provenience. 

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