The Multilayered Chert Sourcing Approach: An Analytical Technique for Chert and Flint Provenance Studies in Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Case Studies in Toolstone Provenance: Reliable Ascription from the Ground Up" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chipped stone tools present an excellent means for gaining a deeper understanding of prehistoric resource management. Successfully reconstructing past economic behavior, however, crucially depends on the ability to trace these materials back to their original sources. While techniques to source obsidian are well established, attempts to generate characteristic “fingerprints” of sedimentary siliceous raw materials such as chert and flint remain in most cases unsatisfying, mainly due to oftentimes high similarities related to their geological formations, and the choices of analytical techniques. Here we demonstrate the Multilayered Chert Sourcing Approach (MLA) combining petrography, microfacies analysis, and geochemistry, to reliably source chert in archaeological contexts. For geochemical analysis, laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) is applied for the detection of trace element concentrations. Geochemical data are evaluated by multivariate statistical methods for optimal source differentiation and the assignment of artifacts to identified source areas. We present case studies that illustrate that it is not sufficient to rely on a single method for chert sourcing, and highlight the potential as well as limitations of the MLA, which has successfully been tested in over 20 projects worldwide.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Case Studies in Toolstone Provenance: Reliable Ascription from the Ground Up

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33235