Chipped Stone Artefacts, Source Areas, and Provenance Studies of the Northern Belize Chert-bearing Zone

Cackler, Paul R.; Glascock, Michael D.; Neff, Héctor; Iceland, Harry B.; Pyburn, K. Anne; Hudler, Dale; Hester, Thomas R.; Chiarulli, Beverly

doi:10.1006/jasc.1998.0340

Cited by 34 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Other archaeologists have used INAA to effectively source microcrystalline artifacts from throughout North America (e.g., Hatch & Miller, 1985;Hoard et al, 1992Hoard et al, , 1993 [but see Church, 1995, andHoard et al, 1995]; Lyons, Glascock, & Mehringer, 2003;Spielbauer, 1984). Cackler et al (1999) had less success using INAA to distinguish chemically homogenous cherts in northern Belize, but others have had encouraging results profiling microcrystalline quartz via other geochemical methods, including XRF (Church, 1990(Church, , 1996Warashina, 1992), Fourier infrared spectroscopy (Long, Silveira, & Julig, 2001), and LA-ICP-MS (Rockman, 2003;Roll et al, 2005).…”

Section: Archaeological Applications Of Stone Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…This is not because geologists and archaeologists have not experimented with these rocks, but rather because microcrystalline quartz forms under such a wide range of conditions that a technique that works well to characterize one source may not work at all elsewhere. Microcrystalline quartz can be so chemically homogenous across a 1000-km-long formation that matching an artifact to it, even with high statistical certainty, is useless for an archaeologist interested in assessing the land use behavior of the knapper (e.g., Cackler et al, 1999;Shackley, 1998). On the other hand, microcrystalline quartz can be so chemically heterogeneous that intra-source variability exceeds inter-source variability, making it impossible to assign an artifact of unknown material to a source candidate (e.g., Roll et al, 2005).…”

Section: Archaeological Applications Of Stone Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pilot study experiments sourcing quartzite, Gunnison Basin, Colorado

et al. 2008

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This paper reports the results of pilot-study efforts to develop methods to profile quartzite, a rock type to which geochemical and other sourcing techniques have only rarely been applied. The long-term goal of the research is to fingerprint sources of quartzite in the Gunnison Basin, southwest Colorado, used by Paleoindian people ca. 11,500-8,000 years ago to make stone tools. Success would facilitate reconstruction of Paleoindian mobility in the Southern Rocky Mountains and potentially anywhere prehistoric people used quartzite. The goals of this paper are more modest: to demonstrate that a small-scale exploration of sourcing techniques suggests reason for optimism that quartzites may be amenable to source discrimination. For the same twenty Gunnison Basin quartzite samples, this study evaluated petrography, ultraviolet fluorescence (UVF), wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WD-XRF), instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry-both acid-digestion (AD-ICP-MS) and laser ablation (LA-ICP-MS)-as means to differentiate among the specimens and the sources they represent. Although more testing is needed to verify and refine our results, the study suggests there is potential for petrography, INAA, and both versions of ICP-MS to discriminate among quartzites from different source localities in the Gunnison Basin. The greatest potential for discriminating among different sources of quartzite in the Gunnison Basin may lie in a methodology combining petrographic analysis and LA-ICP-MS. Future testing is required to evaluate this two-fold approach.

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Section: Archaeological Applications Of Stone Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Archaeological Applications Of Stone Sourcingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pilot study experiments sourcing quartzite, Gunnison Basin, Colorado

et al. 2008

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“…Tools of Colha chert were included in coastal trade and have been found on Moho Cay (McKillop 2004) and Ambergris Caye (Hult and Hester 1995); they also have been identified at inland sites as far away as Tikal (Potter 1993, p. 286). Although the Colha workshops are notable in their size, chert workshops or ''production locales'' are found at sites across the lowlands, serving the needs of their immediate regions (e.g., Barrett 2004Barrett , 2006Black 1987;Cackler et al 1999;Chase and Chase 2004, p. 119;Whittaker et al 2009). …”

Section: Human Activity Indicatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Elusive Maya Marketplace: An Archaeological Consideration of the Evidence

Shaw

2012

J Archaeol Res

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The modeling of ancient Maya economies has been a dynamic area of archaeological research in the past few decades, but in most cases there has been little attention on how goods actually changed hands. Through an overview of the literature, this paper considers marketplace exchange as one mechanism of distribution. Researchers have proposed a number of physical features and artifact characteristics that may be expected in association with marketplace activity, and new methods of data collection have been offered that can be used to build a case for marketplace exchange. What remains is the challenge of developing strategies to identify ancient Maya marketplaces convincingly through archaeological excavation.

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“…These findings concur with the chert intersource comparison that color and textural characteristics of cherts do not appear to result in predictable variation in MS. Likewise, recent geochemical analyses of cherts have found no relationship between color and trace element composition (Cackler et al, 1999). These results underscore the importance of sampling multiple cobbles during any composition characterization of a source area (Consigny, 1992;Ives, 1984).…”

Section: Intrasource (Intercobble) Ms Variability Of Chertsmentioning

confidence: 89%

The magnetic susceptibility of cherts: Archaeological and geochemical implications of source variation

Thacker

Ellwood

2002

Geoarchaeology

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Recent exploratory studies have suggested the potential of magnetic susceptibility (MS) as a rapid and low-cost sourcing technique for lithic archaeological materials. Most commercially available susceptibility instruments, however, do not have the sensitivity to characterize weakly susceptible cherts and silicified woods. Comparative results from nine chert, two silicified wood, a porcellanite, and four obsidian sources using a highly sensitive, calibrated, and magnetically-shielded instrument allow exploration of MS variability within and between geological sources. Color, texture, grain size, and large inclusions of cherts and obsidians are not straightforward determinants of MS. Weathering rinds (patinas) and cortex from a variety of cherts yield reduced MS values, as does a recrystalized cobble of Rio Maior flint, indicating that magnetic mineral removal during chemical weathering and diagenesis is more prevalent than staining or other mineral penetration of cobbles. In situations of multiple overlapping MS ranges, analysis is limited to discriminating cherts with high or low MS range distributions, for example in an atypicality index. Some silicified woods, obsidians, and porcellanites possess a much greater range of intersource variability, and thus sourcing analysis is more likely to be broadly successful using the susceptibility of these materials. Unexpected results from an archaeological test using a historic lithic assemblage from Azinheira, Portugal, indicate that assemblage MS may be influenced by practices of raw material selection. Understanding variability in lithic MS has relevance for the design of most source geochemical sampling, as well as the behavioral interpretations that result from such investigations. ᭧

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Chipped Stone Artefacts, Source Areas, and Provenance Studies of the Northern Belize Chert-bearing Zone

Cited by 34 publications

References 0 publications

Pilot study experiments sourcing quartzite, Gunnison Basin, Colorado

Pilot study experiments sourcing quartzite, Gunnison Basin, Colorado

The Elusive Maya Marketplace: An Archaeological Consideration of the Evidence

The magnetic susceptibility of cherts: Archaeological and geochemical implications of source variation

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