Archaeometry & Materials Analysis: XRF/pXRF (Other Keyword)
51-75 (121 Records)
This is an abstract from the "How Did the Inca Construct Cuzco?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone was fundamental to building Cuzco and there was significant variability in the sources and sizes of stones employed. To understand the history of construction, we must take into account relationships with the people and resources of the wider region, which impacted where the stones originated and how they were worked, transported, and used....
Influence and Exchange: A Technical Study of Colonial Period Ivories from the Philippines (2019)
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. This paper focuses on the early phases of a technical study of the polychrome and gilding on colonial period ivory sculptures produced in the Philippines and transported into Mexico via an annual trade network known as the...
Ixtepeque Obsidian and the Polity: a Network and Boundary Approach in Southeastern Mesoamerica (2019)
This is an abstract from the "I Love Sherds and Parasites: A Festschrift in Honor of Pat Urban and Ed Schortman" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban (2012) borrow theoretical approaches from Bruno Latour (1996), Giddens (1984), and Bourdieu (1977) to highlight networks of shared inter-elite interaction in southeastern Mesoamerica that interpenetrate ethnic and political boundaries. The following paper builds upon...
Judging a Vessel by Its Surface: Investigating Production Process in Corinthian Ceramics through Use of Multiple Non-invasive Instruments (2019)
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. Evidence of ceramic production techniques, such as multiphase firing utilized by 4th-century BCE Greek potters, can be observed through use of non-invasive instrumentation. Portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF),...
Just Up the Hill and Not Down the Line: Ancestral Pueblo Obsidian Use at the Source (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The rich obsidian deposits found in the Jemez Mountains were utilized by all peoples in prehistory, including the Ancestral Pueblo groups who called the mountains home. For most of the geochemically-distinct geologic deposits of obsidian originating...
The Late Introduction of Metals in Southern Italy: Studies from Sicily and Calabria (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Metallurgy arrived quite late in Calabria, Sicily and Malta compared other regions, including the same Italian peninsula. Current hypotheses include an allogenous origin of metallurgy, brought by Aegean merchants, and an indigenous origin due to the presence of mines. The delicate state of many metals has prevented destructive analyses, but it has been...
The Lithic Landscape of the Nenana Valley: Investigating Land-Use and Toolstone Procurement Activities in Interior Alaska (2018)
Investigating prehistoric landscape use is significant in answering questions about the adaptive strategies and behaviors of prehistoric Beringians. How can we define the lithic landscape? How did humans provision themselves in eastern Beringia, and how did these provisioning behaviors change through time? Toolstone procurement and selection behaviors influence toolkits, mobility, and settlement strategies; therefore, they are important in explaining prehistoric behavioral adaptation and the...
Lithic Technology in Spanish Colonial Dixon, 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. In this paper, I explore the lithic technology used in the Spanish colonial outpost of Dixon (or Embudo), New Mexico, before the arrival of the Chili railroad line in 1877. With limited access to metal, the Spanish colonists turned to the native technology of lithic tool production to overcome this absence. By focusing specifically on the obsidian found in...
Looking through the Glass: How Large-Scale XRF Obsidian Sourcing Has Expanded Our View of Late Pre-Hispanic Regional Networks in the U.S. Southwest (2019)
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. Over the past three decades, the Geoarchaeological XRF Lab, founded and directed by Steve Shackley, has defined and established unique chemical fingerprints for nearly all of the obsidian sources used by Native Americans in the pre-Hispanic U.S. Southwest. Sources and sub-source localities can be reliably identified...
Metal and vitreous production technologies at the Early Bronze Age Resuloğlu (Central Anatolia, Turkey) (2018)
Modern day Çorum is the homeland of the Hatti people, the culture that later formed the Hittite Empire. Resuloğlu, dated to the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2500–2100 BC), is one of the few Hatti sites being systematically excavated. The site, located on a hilltop near the Delice River, consists of a cemetery area and settlement that spreads over two opposing–once connected–ridges with numerous extraordinary metal and vitreous artifacts. The settlement exemplifies well the self-sustaining pre-Hittite...
Metal, Pigment, and Prestige: An Analysis of the Form, Decoration, Status, and Use of Inca Stone Vessels (2018)
The ethnohistoric and archaeological records provide ample evidence of the ideological significance of metals and pigments in the pre-Columbian Andean world. This study explores the use of these materials in the complex decorative techniques utilized by the Inca when finishing stone vessels.This research integrates data generated from ethnohistoric sources, portable X-Ray Fluorescent (pXRF) tests, and reconstructive experimentation in order to provide a better understanding of how metals and...
Micro-residues: Developing a Geochemical Baseline for Archaeological Analysis at Temyiq Tuyuryaq (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Temyiq Tuyuryaq: Collaborative Archaeology the Yup’iit Way" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Geochemical analysis of anthropomorphic sediments in a household context have contributed to our understanding of ‘home-making’ including spatial organization and use of residential space (e.g. Frink and Goodale). Geochemical signatures can identify micro-residues such as calcium and phosphorous, suggesting activities that have...
Mission Period Glass Beads from the Northern Channel Islands of California (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Glass beads were an important trade item and symbol of culture contact for Native Americans in coastal California and the Channel Islands where people had manufactured shell and stone beads for some 10,000 years. Glass bead assemblages from the northern Channel Islands, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and San Miguel, all entered the collections of the Smithsonian’s...
Modelling the Connectivity of Socioeconomic Networks of Copper Production in Ancient Northern Oman (2018)
With over 5000 years of production history, Oman was a major ancient source of copper, participating in a trade network that supplied a large part of the ancient world, the extent of which has yet to be fully mapped. As part of the Archaeological Water Histories of Oman (ArWHO) Project, we have been working since 2012 in the Ad-Dhahirah Governorate of Oman to clarify the structure of ancient copper production networks. Methodologically, our investigations employ satellite imagery analysis to map...
Na Ko`i O Wai`ahukini: Adze Size and Sources of Toolstone at Wai`ahukini Rockshelter (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Wai‘ahukini Rockshelter (H8/50-Ha-B21-006), located near South Point on the Island of Hawai‘i, was initially investigated by K. P. Emory, W. Bonk, and Y. Sinoto in the 1950s. The collection has since been curated at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, HI....
Nephrite Jade Mapping in Southeast Asian Prehistory: Petrological and Mineralogical Study of Stone Artifacts (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Two Approaches to Archaeological Jades: Source Characterization and Social Valuation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On-site and laboratory geochemical analyses have been carried out on jade and jade-like artifacts including unfinished pieces in the mainland of Southeast Asia by p-XRF and SEM-EDS respectively. In Vietnam, the results from more than 100 analyses show that the lingling-Os and double animal-headed...
New Approaches to Jomon Dogu: Case Studies from Eastern and Western Japan (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Issues in Japanese Archaeology (2019 Archaeological Research in Asia Symposium)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a study of the clays used in the manufacture of ceramic figurines, or dogu, from the Jomon period of Japanese archaeology. Analyses of clays in dogu from sites in Niigata (eastern Honshu) and Okayama (western Honshu) using a handheld XRF machine will be discussed in the context of...
New Perspectives from Smith Creek Cave: A Lithic Technological and Geochemical Analysis of the Paleoindian Assemblage (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. With the recent reporting of pre-Clovis-aged Western Stemmed components at archaeological sites in the Great Basin, there is renewed interest in the previously excavated Paleoindian assemblage from Smith Creek Cave. There, a stemmed-point component was originally dated to approximately 13,000 years ago. A thorough...
No Hearth, No Problem: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of Ceremonial Architecture at Two Late Preceramic Sites in the Norte Chico Region (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Illuminated Communities: The Role of the Hearth at the Beginning of Andean Civilization" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Multi-elemental analytical techniques like X-Ray Fluorescence have been employed to determine the use of space through residues left behind from human activities. In addition, methodologies primarily used in other disciplines such as pollen analysis or micromorphology can illuminate the...
Obsidian Artifacts at 48PA551: Using Obsidian to Address Land Tenure Strategies among Hunter-Gatherers of the Rocky Mountains (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Tribute to the Contributions of Lawrence C. Todd to World Prehistory" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research uses obsidian data from a single site in the GYE to test existing land tenure and territoriality models based on the sourcing and subsequent movement of obsidian. While on a spectrum, existing studies have generally polarized between two major schools of thought. These perspectives diverge over whether...
Obsidian Artifacts from La Venta and Sources in Mesoamerica (2019)
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 the late 1960s, Heizer and colleagues at UC-Berkeley began to use X-ray fluorescence to measure chemical fingerprints for obsidian artifacts from a number of sites in Mesoamerica. In their study of obsidian artifacts from the Olmec site of La Venta, they found that 93% of the artifacts were explained by five distinct...
Obsidian Characterization in East Africa (2019)
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. Steve Shackley’s wide-reaching research includes X-ray fluorescence analyses of obsidian from East Africa. He and co-authors explored sources of obsidian from sites in Ethiopia, providing data that informed many later studies in a relatively unknown region for obsidian studies. Our work on obsidian from mid-Holocene...
Obsidian Distribution in Michoacán during the Epiclassic Period (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Crossing Boundaries: Interregional Interactions in Pre-Columbian Times" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the Epiclassic, well known as a transitionary period, some emerging chiefdoms sought control of exchange networks and natural resources like obsidian. Specifically, in Western Mesoamerica, in Michoacán are two obsidian sources that had a local distribution across the Lake Chapala basin, the central mountain...
Obsidian Exchange and Political Change: Shifting Patterns of Obsidian Use Across the Late Classic and Postclassic at Fracción Mujular (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Fracción Mujular is a small domestic settlement located on the slopes of Cerro Bernal near the Pacific Coast of Chiapas, Mexico. Founded under the auspices of the Early Classic center of Los Horcones, Fracción Mujular was occupied for nearly one thousand years, persisting through the Collapse of Los Horcones and entering into a period of rapid expansion during...
Obsidian Exchange and Use in Early Formative Chalcatzingo (2018)
In the Middle Formative, Chalcatzingo was one of Highland Mexico’s dominant settlements. At its peak, Chalcatzingo had a well-developed obsidian blade technology and established lines of trade with the Gulf Coast. Chalcatzingo’s role in the exchange of obsidian in earlier periods is less well understood. This paper combines geochemical sourcing and technological analysis of an Early Formative obsidian assemblage from Chalcatzingo in order to elucidate this role. Geochemical sourcing enables a...