Applications of elemental analysis for archaeometric studies : analytical and statistical methods for understanding geochemical trends in ceramics, ochre and obsidian

The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file.Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on August 7, 2007)Vita.Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Missouri-Columbia 2006.Three areas are covered in this dissertation: elemental analysis of Caborn-Welborn ceramics, elemental analysis and geochemical characterization of ochres, and construction and implementation of a portable XRF instrument for artifact analysis.The first study is analysis of ceramics from Caborn-Welborn (Ohio Valley) archaeological sites, using both instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE). By using principal components analysis and posterior discriminant analysis, it was possible to compositionally distinguish lower Ohio Valley ceramics in both extra-regional and local analyses. The second study analyzes iron oxides (ochre) from several sources using instrumental trace analysis techniques, including INAA, and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). Multivariate statistics of the data point to trends in the inter- and intra-source variability of ochre. Elemental results from Missouri, California, Oregon, Texas, Arizona, and Peru have been investigated. These trends in geochemistry lead to a better understanding of ancient ochre procurement. The third study covers the set-up, design and system geometry calculations, testing, and calibration of a portable XRF system. The system was transported to and used successfully in southern Peru in August 2005 to characterize obsidian artifacts.Includes bibliographical reference

Microbial composition analyses by 16S rRNA sequencing: A proof of concept approach to provenance determination of archaeological ochre

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Many archaeological science studies use the concept of “provenance”, where the origins of cultural material can be determined through physical or chemical properties that relate back to the origins of the material. Recent studies using DNA profiling of bacteria have been used for the forensic determination of soils, towards determination of geographic origin. This manuscript presents a novel approach to the provenance of archaeological minerals and related materials through the use of 16S rRNA sequencing analysis of microbial DNA. Through the microbial DNA characterization from ochre and multivariate statistics, we have demonstrated the clear discrimination between four distinct Australian cultural ochre sites

Novel application of X-ray fluorescence microscopy (XFM) for the non-destructive micro-elemental analysis of natural mineral pigments on Aboriginal Australian objects

Open Access Article. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence.This manuscript presents the first non-destructive synchrotron micro-X-ray fluorescence study of natural mineral pigments on Aboriginal Australian objects. Our results demonstrate the advantage of XFM (X-ray fluorescence microscopy) of Aboriginal Australian objects for optimum sensitivity, elemental analysis, micron-resolution mapping of pigment areas and the method also has the advantage of being non-destructive to the cultural heritage objects. Estimates of pigment thickness can be calculated. In addition, based on the elemental maps of the pigments, further conclusions can be drawn on the composition and mixtures and uses of natural mineral pigments and whether the objects were made using traditional or modern methods and materials. This manuscript highlights the results of this first application of XFM to investigate complex mineral pigments used on Aboriginal Australian objects

Methods for analysis of glass in glass-containing gunshot residue (gGSR) particles

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (March 2019) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyWhen lead, barium and antimony, or lead, barium, calcium, silicon and tin are found together in particles associated with a shooting investigation they are considered characteristic of gunshot residue (GSR). Antimony and tin are often absent from the primer of many low calibre rimfire ammunitions, which are the type most commonly used in Australia. Therefore, the likelihood of characteristic particles forming during the firing process of such rimfire ammunition is significantly less than the likelihood of these particles arising from higher calibre ammunition. The majority of rimfire ammunition examined in this research contains ground glass in the primer, which functions as a frictionator. These ammunitions produce a small number of gunshot residue particles containing glass coated with other primer components, which we refer to as glass-containing GSR (gGSR). If these particles are observed in an investigation, they have the potential to add a new dimension to gunshot residue analysis because they are not common in the environment. Furthermore, the composition of glass frictionator is stable during firing, which raises the possibility that chemical testing of the glass in gGSR may be used to identify the ammunition from which the residue was derived or to link deposits of GSR. This paper examines the application of scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (SEM-EDS), focussed ion beam (FIB) techniques and time of flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) to the semi-quantitative analysis and comparisons of gGSR and frictionator extracted from unfired cartridges. SEM-EDS is effective for comparing gGSR with unfired frictionator, but the use of FIB to expose clean glass from the centre of gGSR followed by ToF-SIMS, or ToF-SIMS using ion sputtering to expose clean glass, offers more power for comparisons due to their capability for higher discrimination between frictionators from different sources

Laser Ablation ICP-MS of African Glass Trade Beads

Albuquerque, US

Glass Beads From Kissi (Burkina Faso): Chemical Analysis and Archaeological Interpretation

Frankfurt, German

Four-thousand-year-old gold artifacts from the Lake Titicaca basin, southern Peru

Artifacts of cold-hammered native gold have been discovered in a secure and undisturbed Terminal Archaic burial context at Jiskairumoko, a multicomponent Late Archaic–Early Formative period site in the southwestern Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. The burial dates to 3776 to 3690 carbon-14 years before the present (2155 to 1936 calendar years B.C.), making this the earliest worked gold recovered to date not only from the Andes, but from the Americas as well. This discovery lends support to the hypothesis that the earliest metalworking in the Andes was experimentation with native gold. The presence of gold in a society of low-level food producers undergoing social and economic transformations coincident with the onset of sedentary life is an indicator of possible early social inequality and aggrandizing behavior and further shows that hereditary elites and a societal capacity to create significant agricultural surpluses are not requisite for the emergence of metalworking traditions