An Assessment of the Intrinsic Water Content to Understanding Obsidian Hydration: A Case Study of Paleolithic Obsidian from the Shirataki Region in Hokkaido, Japan

Summary

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.

Among the various factors that potentially affect the obsidian hydration rates, intrinsic water content of obsidian has been considered a significant factor. Despite this understanding, variation in water content even within the geochemically identical provenance of obsidian makes us difficult to evaluate the effect of water content on obsidian hydration rates. Given this problem, we attempt to measure the intrinsic water content of obsidian from the geochemically identical samples from an Upper Paleolithic assemblage of a single prehistoric site in the Shirataki region, known as the largest obsidian outcrop in Hokkaido, northern Japan. Because of the consistency in the other potential factors (burial conditions, date of the assemblage, obsidian provenance) among the samples, the measured difference in hydration bands can be explained by variation in the intrinsic water content. The results of this case study will provide implications to the relationship between intrinsic water content and hydration rates for prehistoric obsidian both in the Old and New Worlds.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Advances in Obsidian Studies of the Old and New Worlds

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23633