Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Radiogenic isotopic systems (e.g., Sr, Nd, Os, Pb) have become widely applied for inferring the geological sources of archaeological materials and for reconstructing technologies integral to their production. Large databases of geological materials (including GlobaLID, IberLID, and Killick et al. [2020]) are now contributing to the growth of these analyses and helping increase access to necessary data for their interpretation. Despite this rise in the use of these techniques and the resources available to these studies, the interpretation of isotopic ratios in archaeological materials is often attempted without a clear understanding of how geological processes produce natural variation or how technological processes (smelting, alloying, recycling, mixing, etc.) can alter isotopic ratios of natural materials. Therefore, we invite papers that address these issues and incorporate geological and/or technological foci for the interpretation of radiogenic isotopic data in archaeological materials.