Introduction: archaeological ivories in a global perspective

Lighting the Ivory Track: Are Near-Infrared and Chemometrics Up to the Job? A Proof of Concept

“…28,[33][34] The application of this technique for the evaluation and identification of biomaterials opens an exciting opportunity for the analysts to employ NIR spectroscopy combined with chemometrics as a means of identifying and differentiating biomaterials such as ivory and/or horn from different mammalian species. Differentiation of these materials is of great importance to the fields of forensics, 35 archaeology, [36][37][38] and conservation. 39 The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential use of NIR spectroscopy combined with chemometric analysis to classify horn and ivory samples as a rapid method in the combat of illegal trade of these types of samples.…”

‘When elephants battle, the grass suffers.’ Power, ivory and the Syrian elephant

“…Once the landscape was more densely settled again, around the 8th century BC, forests were felled to produce charcoal for iron working and the resulting deforestation caused elephant herds to die off. Over the past 30 years several scholars have concurred with Miller's views (Lane 2015;Moorey 1994: 117-18;Caubet and Poplin 1987: 300-01).…”

“…Liebowitz (1997) for example, claims that the Syrian elephant was hunted to extinction in the Late Bronze Age. Scholars posit that hunters, consisting exclusively of regional royalty and the elite (Caubet and Poplin 2010;Feldman 2014;Lane 2015), hunted the animals to extinction in a mixture of displays of prowess, power and strength, and as entertainment. Pfälzner (2013) also suggests that 'commercial and ideological interests' brought about their end, referring to royal hunts and the exploitation of the animals for ivory production.…”

Sourcing Elephant Ivory from a Sixteenth-Century Portuguese Shipwreck

“…Unworked elephant tusks, ivory working debris and finished objects made from ivory have been recovered from numerous archaeological contexts worldwide, including but not limited to shipwrecks with ivory cargo reported from the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans [59][60][61][62][63]. Our methods are applicable to the vast collections of historic and archaeological ivories in museums across the globe [64][65][66]. Analyzing historic and archaeological ivories affords a window into human-animal relationships across thousands of years, and can reveal the formative and changing patterns of exchange between people who lived oceans apart [30,[67][68][69][70][71].…”