Isotope and Elemental Analyses Using Portable Laser Ablation at the Elemental Analysis Facility: A Progress Report

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The study of archaeological artifacts often needs to be undertaken with no or very limited damage to the objects. It is with this constraint in mind that the Elemental Analysis Facility at the Field Museum was established. The choice of laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) was ideal in this respect as the damage to the artifacts is invisible to the naked eye; however, objects must fit into the laser chamber (10 × 10 × 1.8 cm with our current laser). This is a major limitation for larger objects, inducing sample selection bias. With portable laser, a relatively novel sampling technique, micro sampling is possible virtually anywhere and on any type of objects without limitation of size. Aerosols produced via ablation are pumped in air and deposited onto a Teflon filter. The ablated material can then be directly analyzed for elemental composition via LA-ICP-MS but can also be subjected, after dissolution, to isotope analysis. We are exploring the capabilities of this approach for the elemental analysis of ceramic and copper artifacts and the isotope analysis of lead in copper, silver, and ceramic; of iron in iron-based objects; and of strontium in glass and bones.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Twenty Years of Archaeological Science at the Field Museum’s Elemental Analysis Facility   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38833.0