Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: XRF/pXRF (Other Keyword)
26-50 (121 Records)
The composition of background substrate, overpainted layers and admixtures can influence the data acquired from portable instrumentation at rock art sites. An understanding of the extent and impact of this influence is crucial when comparing in situ rock art pigments with potential source materials. This study uses an experimental process to assess the impact of factors such as a pigment thickness, overpainting, and addition of organic binders on the readings acquired using portable...
Determining the Biographies of the Indonesian Standing Stones at Harvest Preserve, Iowa City, Iowa (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There are numerous megaliths on the islands of Indonesia, including the island of Flores where their constructions date to 2500-1000 BCE. Some of the stones that comprise these megaliths have been trafficked to other countries in recent years. In the early 2000s an Iowa City collector purchased a set of 50 of these standing stones from a location or locations...
Diffraction Peaks as Tools for Distinguishing Chert from Quartz: Applications on Experimental Materials and Paleolithic Retouchers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When conducting micro-X-ray fluorescence (µXRF) analyses of archaeological and geological materials, diffraction peaks, which are produced by crystalline materials, are typically unwanted and methods are devised to minimize their impact on the sample spectrum. Here, we explore the intentional...
The Dirt on Cultural Diversity: Examining Occupation Floor Surfaces in the Moquegua Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Culture Contact and Diversity in Southern Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The recent rise in the availability of literature on the topic soil chemical analysis has inspired growing interest in evaluating soils at archaeological sites to gain a more detailed picture of the lives and culture of the people that once lived there. Through soil analysis, we can better define areas once used for residential...
Discerning Paleoindian Mobility in the Eastern Great Basin: A Geochemical Analysis of Lithic Artifacts from Bonneville Estates Rockshelter and Smith Creek Cave (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic technological organization studies and geochemical analyses provide a useful way for archaeologists to examine prehistoric forager mobility. In the Great Basin, these methods, when applied to assemblages from multi-component sites, have revealed diachronic changes in lithic raw material procurement patterns between the Paleoindian and Early Archaic...
The Dynamics of Māori Socio-political Interaction: Social Network Analyses of Obsidian Circulation in Northland Aotearoa (2018)
The Polynesian colonists who settled New Zealand touched off the creation of a type of society not found in remote Oceania. Over the span of several centuries relatively autonomous village-based groups transformed into larger territorial hapū lineages, which later formed even larger geo-political iwi associations. A social network analysis of the spatial and temporal distribution of obsidian artefacts, an important stone resource that was used for a variety of tools, evaluates where and when new...
An Empirical Analysis of Highland-Lowland Interaction in the Aztatlán Tradition (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Aztatlán tradition constituted the primary economic and cultural development during the Early/Middle Postclassic (AD 900-1350) in west Mexico. Though politically decentralized, this culture was rooted on the Pacific coastal plain and featured vast trade networks. Located 100 km inland, the Etzatlán Basin is the westernmost lake basin in the Jalisco...
Evaluating Wari Impact on Regional Trade Networks: Patterns of Obsidian Exchange in Cusco, Peru before and during the Middle Horizon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle Horizon (600-1000 CE) in the Central Andes was a time of important changes due to the expansion of the Wari and Tiwanaku states. Many scholars have argued that these polities, the Wari in particular, had a major economic impact on local communities, including the disruption of regional exchange networks and the reorientation of long-distance trade...
An Evaluation of Obsidian Projectile Point Chronology and Possible Sourcing in the Tehuacan Valley, Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Innovations and Transformations in Mesoamerican Research: Recent and Revised Insights of Ancestral Lifeways" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Obsidian, a volcanic glass, was widely used in Mesoamerica for cutting tools, weapons, jewelry, and ritual objects since the Paleoindian period (ca. 9000 BC). Because its sources have unique chemical signatures, obsidian provides a durable and measurable index of interactions...
Examining Handheld XRF Inter-Instrument Variation: A Collaborative Project Using a Large Assemblage from the Great Basin (2018)
Collaborating with multiple XRF instruments enables larger than normal datasets to be analyzed in a short period. The portability of instruments is important to analysts working together in one location as groups of specimens can be analyzed simultaneously. However, certain protocols must be followed so there are no discrepancies among instruments. We present our project’s methodological controls, such as shared source library and calibration, and preliminary results. The study consists of over...
Exploring Toolstone Provisioning on the Nenana Valley Lithic Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Beringian record is critical to understanding human dispersals and adaptive behaviors of the earliest peoples in the Americas. Late Pleistocene and Holocene peoples subsisted on a dynamic and changing landscape that undoubtedly influenced technological organization, including toolstone procurement and selection patterns. The interior Alaskan record is...
Formative Ceramic and Obsidian Transitions at Salinas La Blanca (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Salinas La Blanca, located within the coastal estuary of the Soconusco region of Guatemala, was occupied from the Early to Middle Formative periods. This was a period of considerable cultural change, as Olmec influence on the Pacific Coast waned and regional centers developed more centralized power. This paper presents the results of a chemical compositional...
From Source to Site: Investigating Diachronic Toolstone Procurement and Land-Use in the Nenana Valley, Interior Alaska (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeological record of Eastern Beringia is critical to understanding human dispersal into the Americas and the settling-in processes of the First Americans and their descendants. Investigating prehistoric landscape use and provisioning behaviors is significant in answering questions related to adaptive behaviors of prehistoric Beringians. We can begin...
A Geochemical Analysis of Concave Base and Western Stemmed Tradition Projectile Points in Southeastern Oregon (2018)
The relationship between concave base and Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) projectile points in the Great Basin is not well-understood. They may represent sequential Late Pleistocene technologies, coeval technologies used by different ethnolinguistic populations, or different components within the same toolkits. To explore the latter possibility, I collected geochemical sourcing data for both types of artifacts recovered from three adjacent valleys in southeastern Oregon: (1) Warner Valley; (2)...
Geochemical Analysis of Crystalline Volcanic Rock Artifacts from Three Olcott Sites along the Elwha River, Clallam County, Washington (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Research into the Old Cordilleran" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Raw material sourcing of crystalline volcanic rock (CVR) artifacts through geochemical analysis has a decades long history in Olympic Peninsula archaeological research and is an important aspect of site interpretation. Recent archaeological investigations at three Olcott sites by Archaeological and Historical Services, EWU as a part of Washington...
Geochemical Characterization and Raw Material Procurement at McDonald Creek, Alaska (2021)
This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Around 14,000 years ago, modern humans dispersed into eastern Beringia. McDonald Creek, located in the Tanana Valley, central Alaska, is a significant part of characterizing this dispersal as one of the earliest known sites in eastern Beringia. This site posesses three cultural...
Geochemical Characterization of Sediments for the Understanding of Site Occupation History in Mt. Trumbull (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology of the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The first excavation of the pithouse structure site was conducted during the summer of 2018 in Mt. Trumbull as a part of settlement pattern investigation in this area. A long trench excavation conducted at the center of a depression observed in this site revealed a large pithouse floor in the limestone bedrock. The profile of...
A Geochemical Look at Obsidian Procurement and Exchange in the Medio period World: A Case Study 76 Draw (LA 156980) (2018)
Geochemical provenance analysis of obsidian is a productive avenue for studying social interaction and lithic raw material procurement strategies in the U.S. Southwest. Here the results of the analysis of 180 obsidian artifacts recovered from 76 Draw, a Medio period (A.D.1200 to 1450) settlement in New Mexico are presented. The combined assemblage reflects local geochemical sources, as well as obsidian from more distant geochemical sources often seen in assemblages associated with the Ancestral...
Geosourcing and Geopolitics: Handheld XRF Analysis of Obsidian from Households in the Yaxuna-Coba Region (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents results of sourcing analysis of artifacts from Classic period Maya sites in Northern Yucatán and Quintana Roo from household contexts using handheld X-ray fluorescence (hXRF). Previous analysis by Danielle Waite sourced artifacts from Coba and Yaxuna from excavations by the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán and...
Get the Lead Out! Establishing a Global Database for the Elemental Analysis of Roundball Ammunition (2018)
Archaeologists with the LAMAR Institute and the National Park Service collaborated in an ambitious undertaking to characterize the elemental composition of round ball ammunition from early historic sites. Researchers used portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) technology to sample the elemental content of over 500 round balls from more than 17 different archaeological sites in eastern North America. These include samples from Native American and Euro-American settlements as well as French and Indian...
Green Epidote: Painting the Past in Cerro de Oro, a Chemical and Mineralogical Analysis of the Green-Yellowish Ceramic Pigment (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Developments through Time on the South Coast of Peru: In Memory of Patrick Carmichael" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The following study proposes to analyze one of the most characteristic pigments of the Cañete Valley during the Middle Horizon period; specifically, the green-yellowish color in the Cerro de Oro ceramic repertoire. Defining the origin and use of this pigment allows for a better understanding of the...
A History Cast in Stone: Geochemical Chert Sourcing Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (PXRF) in Southern Ontario (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. To test the validity of portable X-Ray Fluorescence (PXRF) for chert sourcing, thirty-two chert artifacts from the Waterloo Regional Museum in southern Ontario were compared to chert source samples. The use of PXRF in archaeology has raised questions about the method’s validity. The portable versions of XRF have lower energy outputs which in turn produces...
Imports and Outcrops: Characterizing the Baantu Obsidian Source and Artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, Wolaita, Ethiopia, Using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Advances in Material Sourcing and Provenience Studies in Africa" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Forty-two obsidian samples from the Baantu obsidian source, including 25 outcrop samples and 17 surface artifacts, were characterized using portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. These source data were then compared to 116 obsidian artifacts from Mochena Borago Rockshelter, excavated from levels dated to >50 ka BP...
In-Field XRF of Obsidian from Sites in the Lion Mountain Community of West-Central New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lion Mountain Community of west-central New Mexico is the largest and most easterly example of what has been described as a Zuni Region phenomena. A focus of this research is examining interactions both within the community and the broader region. In contrast to other lines of evidence, such as architecture and ceramic typology, in-field ED-XRF analysis of...
In-Situ pXRF Analysis of Episodic Pictograph Production (2018)
Yokuts ethnography indicates that pictograph sites passed from father to son to grandson within shamanic lineages, suggesting episodic painting at these locations. This practice is archaeologically supported by motif superimpositions and minor stylistic differences at sites. An in-situ pXRF study of red motifs was conducted at site CA-TUL-2871, Springville, CA, in the hopes of analytically distinguishing painting episodes, based on the assumption that chemically dissimilar pigments may have been...