Cautious vs. Interesting: Cultural Interpretation of Absorbed Organic Pottery Residues

Summary

Absorbed organic pottery analysis is a technically easy but interpretively difficult branch of archaeometry. Given the complex interaction between organic chemistry, pot use, pyrolytic effects, depositional effects, and modern contamination, it is often difficult to balance interpretations between appropriately cautious and culturally and anthropologically useful information. This issue is illustrated through the analysis and interpretation of a suite of absorbed organic pottery residues extracted from pottery excavated from the Louisiana Gulf coast. Compounds in these sherds result from a complex mixture of events, including archaeological usage, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, post-spill use of dispersants, and normal depositional issues. How do we untangle these interlocking cultural events to produce a meaningful interpretation?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• The Science of Organic Residue Analysis and the Art of Cultural Interpretation I

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16886