PXRF Analyses of Metal Artifacts from Spanish Colonial Sites in the American Southeast

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

We have conducted pXRF analyses on over 300 metal artifacts from Spanish colonial sites in the Americas that date from the 1500s to 1700s. Most are from the American Southeast, but the sample also includes locations in South America and the Caribbean. Sites encompass Indigenous towns visited by Spanish expeditions to presidios. The initial results of our study on iron and copper artifacts suggest that for any given metal there are compositional regularities that may systematically vary temporally and by object type. Sixteenth-century iron artifacts, as one example, are consistently purer in iron that later ones. We hypothesize that these patterns relate to both shifting sources of raw material and the production processes for objects such as horseshoes. It is possible that these regularities may allow us to eventually make informed estimates about the general date and source of metal artifact assemblages for which data on historical context is lacking.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow