Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: XRF/pXRF (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Pintar. María Fernanda Rodríguez.

The earliest occupations in the Salt Puna —a high elevation desert in the Andes Mountains — date to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary and are relevant to the discussion of the timing of the first exploration and colonization of South American elevations above 3500m, as well as the relationship between mountain environments and other ecological areas. The wooden shafts used in the extractive technologies of the earliest hunter-gatherers originated outside the Puna, in the eastern lowlands....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luis Velázquez-Maldonado. Berenice Pedroza. David Larreina-García. Mario A. Retiz-García. Blanca Maldonado.

This is an abstract from the "Technological Transitions in Prehispanic and Colonial Metallurgy: Recent and Ongoing Research at the Archaeological Site of Jicalán Viejo, in Central Michoacán, West Mexico" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El sitio arqueológico de Jicalán Viejo (posclásico tardío - colonial temprano) presenta una elevada concentración en superficie de escorias de metalurgia, relacionadas con los procesos de beneficio del cobre. El...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Helen Green.

This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Oxalate-rich, glaze-like mineral deposits are commonly found on low-angle surfaces in Australian rock art shelters. The synchronous growth of individual layers in these deposits across the Kimberley region of northwest Australia, suggests an environmental control, though the exact nature of this link is unclear. Some glazes,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ying-Li Wu.

This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Placing robust age constraints on the production of rock art is difficult because the lack of suitable material for sampling. This is especially true in the case of petroglyphs where ‘paints’ are unavailable. The ARC-funded project ‘Dating Murujuga’s Dreaming’ faces this challenge by trying to identify a chronology for rock...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kyle Freund. Daron Duke. Erin Eichenberg. Lucas Johnson. David Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster concerns the Tule Springs Archaeological Site (79001461/26CK4) in Clark County, Nevada, and new analyses of the obsidian flake discovered there in 1933. The importance of the flake rests in its then-postulated association with the fossil remains of extinct Pleistocene megafauna and the long-term research endeavors that have happened since....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Zazueta.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya used to prepare the body of their deceased family members for its proper cycling according to long-standing family traditions and more collective ideas, anchored in Indigenous beliefs of the sublime vivifying qualities of colors and fragrant matter in communicating with the anecumene of the divine. Such an entity was the itz sap, a sacred...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Meredith Luze.

The Anthropology collections at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) have a long history of treatment with pesticides and contact with other materials that contain potentially hazardous elements. When the NMNH Repatriation Office began to use portable x-ray fluorescence (pXRF) technology, it focused on identifying potentially hazardous elements on archaeology, ethnology, and physical anthropology collections. If identified, the Repatriation Office attempted to determine the source of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Eeckhout. Kusi Colonna-Preti.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2014 to 2018, we excavated Building B15, a small temple decorated with mural paintings at the archaeological site of Pachacamac. These are the first paintings discovered on the site since 1938. On the walls, as on...

DOCUMENT Full-Text Lawrence Todd. Rachel Reckin.

This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In comparison to other Archaic sites in the eastern portions of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), the Dead Indian Creek site (48PA551) has an unusually high number of obsidian projectile points (N=29). Geochemical source characterization of 23 of the 48PA551 obsidian points...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Bergmann. Robert H. Tykot.

Peru is commonly known for having the largest empire in pre-Columbian America, but comparatively little is known about the subsistence practices of the pre-Inca communities that existed in the inland valley of Chincha during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000-1476). The Chinchas formed a powerful socio-economic entity within the Chincha Kingdom in part of the southern region of Peru nearest to the Pacific Ocean. Our research tests the hypothesis that individuals relied more heavily on a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeffrey R. Ferguson.

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past few decades, the increasing use of compositional studies of archaeological materials has dramatically enhanced our knowledge of the past, but as the diversity and availability of analytical techniques increases it is necessary to understand all of the variables involved in the choice of analytical method. In this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wright.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a study that uses x-ray fluorescence (XRF) to examine European glass trade beads from the Chickasawhay Creek Sites (22KE630 & 22KE718) in Kemper County, Mississippi. Together, these two sites present a unique opportunity to examine Choctaw ethnogenesis. Although a combination of archaeological and ethnohistorical research has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tristen Jones.

This is an abstract from the "New approaches to the intractable problem of dating rock art" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Innovations in methods that target datable materials using radiocarbon (Finch et al. 2019; Green et al. 2021) has enhanced the capacity of rock art researchers to date rock art in Australia, producing a range age determinations for a diversity of rock art motifs (Finch et al. 2020; 2021; Jones et al. 2017). Similarly age...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Isabel Guevara-Duque.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation showcases results from research on the metallurgical traditions of the Yaguachi chiefdom, a regional polity within the Milagro-Quevedo society that thrived in the Guayas Basin, Ecuador, between 400 and 1400 CE. Despite the region's apparent lack of local metal sources, the presence of copper alloys and other metals in burial sites...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ellery Frahm.

This is an abstract from the "2019 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of M. Steven Shackley" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1983, an advertisement for a Tracor X-ray spectrometer proclaimed that "the world of XRF will never be the same again" thanks to an integrated microcomputer that "takes the confusion out of instrumental analysis." It was an exaggeration that this model offered "mistake-proof" XRF, but the point is that this...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brendan Weaver. Nicola Sharratt.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Botijas were the universal packaging for dry and liquid goods transported throughout the global Iberian empires of the Early Modern world. Heirs to the potting traditions of Mediterranean amphorae, these vessels are the most ubiquitous ceramics at Spanish colonial sites in the Americas. We present new research combining stylistic analysis and Portable...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefano Biagetti.

This is an abstract from the "Exploring Long-Term Pastoral Dynamics: Methods, Theories, Stories" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Pastoralism is now recognized as a smart economy for food production in drylands, especially in the current scenario of climate change, where natural resource variability is increasing globally. Outdated stereotypes about the inefficiency and irrationality of pastoralism are being reevaluated, and there is a shift in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Holyoke. Branden Rizzuto.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Carboniferous Chert Geoarchaeological Survey (CCGS) was initiated in 2019 in order to identify and characterize the distribution of geological occurrences of Carboniferous-aged cherts in New Brunswick, Canada, and, to better understand the archaeological exploitation of those lithic materials. Initial fieldwork associated with the CCGS sought to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melanie Langgle.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Collier Lodge Site (12Pr36) is on the southern edge of Porter County in Indiana in the northmost part of the Kankakee Marsh. The archaeological site is uniquely represented by its extensive ceramic assemblage that spans from 1000 BC to historic times. Despite this trove of ceramic data, the chronology of the site and Northwestern Indiana region has...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hui Xiao.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Located at the Apalachicola River mouth in northwest Florida, the Pierce Mounds site (8Fr14) is the largest ceremonial center in the region and a hub for human activity from the Early Woodland to Mississippian periods (ca. 500 BC–AD 1500). Previous research identified interesting but confusing settlement patterns, including a possible oval plaza formed by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Luke Stroth. Rebekah Truhan. Jacob Foubert.

This paper applies the chaîne opératoire analytical framework to hearth maintenance behavior. There are distinct phases of production involved in creating and maintaining a hearth, as new hearthstones are introduced, exhausted, and discarded. These stages may be identified through spatial distribution of new and exhausted hearthstones. The authors argue that these stages may also be identified geochemically. We use pXRF to compare a series of experimental burnings to those from a hearth feature...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Xiaozheng Shang.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ochre sensu lato is considered to be one of the earliest evidence of human cognition and culture due to its raw materials diversity, its significance in raw materials processing, and its large panel of uses. However, there are little data from central Africa on the use of ochre in cultural systems during the terminal Pleistocene and Holocene. As part of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only E. Cory Sills. Heather McKillop.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Paynes Creek Salt Works were an ancient Maya Classic Period (A.D. 300-900) salt industry located in a shallow salt water lagoon in southern Belize. The rise of the Paynes Creek Salt Works mirrored the growth in population at inland communities during the Late Classic Period (A. D. 600-900) where salt—a basic biological necessity—was scarce. The demand for...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Kebler. Michael Callaghan. Brigitte Kovacevich.

Slip, a fluid suspension of clay that is applied to the surface of a piece of ceramic, allows for increased control over the functional and aesthetic properties of the finished vessel. The potter can select a slip to provide a more appealing color, texture, and/or luster to the vessel’s surface, while maintaining the favorable functional qualities of the paste.While slip color has long been used as an attribute for classification in the Maya lowlands, only recently have the raw materials of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Heather Hurst.

This is an abstract from the "From Materials to Materiality: Analysis and Interpretation of Archaeological and Historical Artifacts Using Non-destructive and Micro/Nano-sampling Scientific Methods" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The dissemination of wall paintings from the Late Preclassic period Maya site of San Bartolo, Guatemala, have focused on the in situ north and west walls of the buried chamber named Sub-1A. In contrast to their excellent...