Prologue to Uses of Chemical Residues to Make Statements About Human Activities

Abstract

Soil chemistry provides the potential for interpreting the archaeological record without necessarily resorting to artifacts, historical documents, ethnoarchaeological observations, or experiments. The range of studies incorporating new technological developments, such as mass spectrometry and multi-element analyses, for analyzing and interpreting the chemical residues found at archaeological sites or modern contexts are increasing in the literature. However, the dilemmas of interpretation concentrate on evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of different techniques. Analytical approaches to how scientists make use of chemical residues to make statements about the past, discussed here, expand the potential of the breadth of techniques to investigate daily life activities and further our understanding of the materiality of social life.

Reconstructing site organization in the eastern Aleutian Islands, Alaska using multi-element chemical analysis of soils

“…Entwistle et al, 2007;Linderholm, 2007). Results indicate that several chemical elements occur in enriched or depleted amounts as a result of specific human activities (Table 1) and that the analysis of multiple elements can pinpoint site activity areas despite well-known issues with site formation processes (Griffith, 1980(Griffith, , 1981Holliday et al, 2010;Konrad et al, 1983;Linderholm and Lundberg, 1994;Macphail and Cruise, 2001;Matthews, 1995;Matthews et al, 1997;Middleton, 1998;Middleton and Price, 1996;Schiffer, 1972Schiffer, , 1983Schiffer, , 1987Schuldenrain, 1995), though see Varela and Dore (2010) for possible issues.…”

Micromorphological Analyses of Inuit Communal Sod Houses in Northern Labrador, Canada

“…Soil micromorphology is one such technique of analysis that reveals evidence of the human footprint on the microscopic scale in archaeological soil (Courty, Goldberg, & Macphail, ). By identifying anthropogenic signatures within occupation layers, researchers have contributed more accurate interpretations of human activity on archaeological sites (Entwistle, Abrahams, & Dodgshon, ; Holliday, Lawrence‐Zuniga, & Buchli, ).…”