Assessing the Strength of Prehistoric Glues

Summary

Glues and adhesives have been used since ~200,000 years ago. A significant question about glues and adhesives in prehistoric contexts is exactly what level of holding strength do various blends have. A widely used glue in prehistory is pine pitch; whose ingredients are pine sap, ash, and a binder, such as dried grass. An experiment is presented here to determine how strong variations in concentrations of these ingredients affect holding strength. Six different variations of the glue were used, with modern wood glue as a control. Each glue was tested ten times to measure holding strength by applying the glue to two oak wood blocks and then applying steady force until failure. After all the testing was complete the data was analyzed to see how each sample compared to the control and which concentration of ingredients worked best.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15689