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

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Tykot. Andrea Vianello.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The tiny island of Palmarola, about 35 km south of Cape Circeo (between Rome and Naples, Italy), was an important source of obsidian during the Neolithic in the Central Mediterranean. While thought to have been a minor source, compared to Lipari and Sardinia, extensive artifact analyses in recent years of museum and other collections show that Palmarola...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theodore Marks.

This is an abstract from the "Where Is Provenance? Bridging Method, Evidence, and Theory for the Interpretation of Local Production" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Basalts and dolomites, associated with the Etendeka Large Igneous Province (ELIP), in northwestern Namibia, often make up the bulk of lithic raw materials present in archaeological assemblages from the region. Different igneous formations within the ELIP can readily be distinguished...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Takashi Sakaguchi. Satoshi Okamura.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The goal of this paper is to determine the source of grave stones for exploring the political economy among regional groups on the Ishikari Plain in the Late Jomon of central Hokkaido who created shuteibo (a type of communal cemetery characterized by a circular embankment). Our previous petrological analyses based on polarizing microscopical observation of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tawny Tibbits.

The Maya site of Pacbitun in Belize has produced large amounts of granite ground stone tools, debitage, and debris. Determining provenance is integral to reconstructing the chaîne opératoire of ground stone tool production at the site. Portable X-Ray fluorescence (pXRF) is becoming widely used in the field for quick and accurate geochemical assessments. Most prior archaeological work has focused on fine-grained materials, rather than coarse-grained rocks like granite. This project used geologic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Adam Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Jose Saramago’s classic "The Stone Raft", the Iberian peninsula breaks free from Europe to float unmoored into the Atlantic, etching into continental geology what David Anthony has termed a "persistent frontier": a fault line demarcating durable cultural, ethnic, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Randy Haas. Eric Dillingham. Debbie Lundy. Nicolas Tripcevich. Mikayla Rosario.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have suggested that economies of scale gained from cooperative hunting fueled the evolution of human sociality. This model anticipates inflated levels of cooperation during group-hunting events in comparison to other contexts. To evaluate this prediction, we examine the provenance of 395 obsidian projectile points from the large communal hunting...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Bergmann.

This is an abstract from the "From the Paracas Culture to the Inca Empire: Recent Archaeological Research in the Chincha Valley, Peru" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Chincha Valley was one of the most productive regions on the southern coast of Peru, yet 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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Nicole Rose.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the desert-steppe zone of southwestern Russia, mobile pastoralism served as the dominant mode of subsistence for much of its history. However, mobile pastoralism as a term refers to a diversity of practices, distinguished across multiple axes, the least of which is the mobile strategy itself. Pottery, as both an everyday object and a form of technology...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Speakman.

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 15-20 years, archaeological chemistry has moved largely from centralized laboratories of interdisciplinary expertise to decentralized laboratories where expertise often times is lacking. This shift is most pronounced in the widespread adoption and use of inexpensive, compact, highly portable XRF...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roxana Cattaneo. Gisela Sario. Gilda Collo. Andres Izeta. Jose Caminoa.

In the archaeology of the Sierras Centrales of Argentina more than one hundred years ago studies reported the presence of a lithic technology centered on the use of quartz as a predominant raw material. However, little effort has been made to try to characterize its chemical composition so as to understand the circuits of mobility or the exchange networks in the archaeological sites of the region. The results of provenance studies have allowed us to advance in a geochemical characterization of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sean Dolan.

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. The movement of people, objects, and ideas between the American Southwest/Northwest Mexico (SW/NW) and Mesoamerica is one of the most enduring and debated research topics in American archaeology. Pueblo and Mesoamerican groups prominently used obsidian for hunting, warfare, and ceremony, but is there Mesoamerican...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José L. Peña. Robert H. Tykot.

This is an abstract from the "Scaling Potting Networks: Recent Contributions from Ceramic Petrography " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The present research focuses on the strategies in the procurement of raw material used in the production of pottery at the El Campanario site during the beginning of the Late Intermediate period (AD 1150–1280). The manufacture of pottery occurred within the domestic areas at this site and while domestic pottery was...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Sosa Aguilar. Bernardo Archuleta.

This paper aims to discuss how the success of community partnership has led to an understanding of the way people moved across the landscape in the past. Situated in northern New Mexico, the Pueblo de Abiquiú contains a rich history that dates back at least into 2,800 – 4,000 BP (Before Present). Using portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, obsidian artifacts found at the pueblo suggests that groups are bringing obsidian from at least three known local sources. However, there is an...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kevin Wright. Elliot H. Blair.

In partnership with Tennessee Valley Archaeological Research (TVAR), this poster presents the results of an x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) analysis of ceramics recovered from historic Choctaw (Late 17th - Early 19th century) contexts at sites (22KE630 and 22KE718) located along Chickasawhay Creek, Kemper County, MS. In the fall of 2017, a sample of ceramic sherds was selected for chemical sourcing at the University of Alabama. XRF was used to non-destructively identify ceramic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kennedy. Sarah Kelloway.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Field portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) has seen an increase in use for testing potentially toxic levels of heavy metals in modern mining and industrial waste sites. Understanding the spatial variation of pollutants in soil is necessary for identifying proper prevention measures for soil contamination and long-term effects on human health. While...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Max Seidita. Whittaker Schroder. Alejandra Roche Recinos. Charles Golden. Andrew Scherer.

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. More than a decade of archaeological research has characterized the political landscape of the middle Usumacinta river valley as a tense political rivalry between the Classic period Maya (250 – 900 C.E.) kingdoms. Recent archaeological work in the kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan has sought to unravel how the internal...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Davis. Lucas Martindale Johnson. Elsa Carpenter. Lee Drake. Daron Duke.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists continue to push the limits of nondestructive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis in efforts to geochemically source small obsidian artifacts. Building on numerous prior investigations, this study examines a statistically large sample of unmodified obsidian flakes to better define the size threshold for acceptable precision and accuracy and to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Kahn. John Sinton.

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. Our WDXRF sourcing program of geological and archaeological specimens (n=177) from the Society Islands, outlines the dynamics of inter- and intra-archipelago exchange over an 800 year period. Adzes from 21 sources were identified. Those traded in from the Marquesas Islands, an over 1,400 km voyage, are found with low...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Corey Bowen. Emma Branson. Patrick Ryan Williams. John Janusek.

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. Turnovers in political and religious authority in the ancient Titicaca Basin correspond with significant, intentional shifts in material procurement practices. During the 5th century AD, the developing Tiwanaku elite asserted a new ideological hegemony through a novel monumental and iconographic tradition. Tiwanaku masons also...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Monica Dyer.

Little documentation exists of the trade exchange occurring in the central Piedmont during the 18th and 19th century at wealthy plantation sites or at surrounding sites of lower economic status. In this historical archaeology research, I focus on understanding the socio-economic patterns of settlers in the more rural areas of the region at two plantation sites and wasters from a local kiln site from same time period. Using pXRF data of lead glazed earthenware I attempt to map ceramic regional...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jonah Augustine. Brandi MacDonald.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the results of a combined XRF and Raman spectroscopic analysis of pigments used in the production of Middle Horizon ceramics from Arani, Cochabamba, Bolivia, that are currently housed at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The two central questions that this analysis investigates are (1) which of these materials were produced in...