Hyperspectral X-Ray Fluorescence of the Luni glasses

Summary

To investigate raw materials provenance, date and models of production of archaeological glass it is essential to characterize and define compositional groups based on the elemental composition. However, obtaining such information traditionally requires performing micro-destructive analysis on micro-samples. Here, the use of hyperspectral X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) is investigated as alternative tool for the examination of Roman natron glass. The full multichannel analyzer (MCA) data of the individual spectra is exported as a stack of images corresponding to every channel present in the XRF spectrum. The resulting hyperspectral image cube can be interrogated using image-based chemometric techniques, namely principal component analysis (PCA)

A dataset of 31 glass fragments excavated at the archaeological site of Luni, Italy, and dated 1st to 4th century AD, has been selected to illustrate the strong potential of this qualitative examination method for archaeological glass research. The good agreement with the compositional groups defined by LA-ICP-MS analysis of the same glass samples strongly support the use of hyperspectral XRF as a powerful non invasive and non destructive tool for the analysis of archaeological glass, able to highlight the main differences in glass samples and discriminate compositional groups without the need for quantification.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Glass and Glass technology: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Archaeological Research   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage