TY - JOUR
T1 - Micro X-ray Fluorescence Study of Late Pre-Hispanic Ceramics from the Western Slopes of the South Central Andes Region in the Arica y Parinacota Region, Chile
T2 - A New Methodological Approach
AU - Flewett, Samuel
AU - Saintenoy, Thibault
AU - Sepúlveda, Marcela
AU - Mosso, Edward Fabian
AU - Robles, Carolina
AU - Vega, Katherine
AU - Gutierrez, Sebastian
AU - Romero, Alvaro
AU - Finney, Lydia
AU - Maxey, Evan
AU - Vogt, Stefan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Society for Applied Spectroscopy.
PY - 2016/10/1
Y1 - 2016/10/1
N2 - Archeological ceramic paste material typically consists of a mix of a clay matrix and various millimeter and sub-millimeter sized mineral inclusions. Micro X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is a standard compositional classification tool and in this work we propose and demonstrate an improved fluorescence map processing protocol where the mineral inclusions are automatically separated from the clay matrix to allow independent statistical analysis of the two parts. Application of this protocol allowed us to enhance the discrimination between different ceramic shards compared with the standard procedure of working with only the spatially averaged elemental concentrations. Using the new protocol, we performed an initial compositional classification of a set of 83 ceramic shards from the western slopes of the south central Andean region in the Arica y Parinacota region (Chile). Comparing the classifications obtained using the new versus the old (average concentrations only) protocols, we found that some samples were erroneously classified with the old protocol. From an archaeological perspective, a broad and heterogeneous regional sample set was used in this experimental study due to the fact that this was the first such analysis to be performed on ceramics from this region. This allowed a general overview to be obtained, however further work on more specific sample sets will be necessary to extract concrete archaeological conclusions.
AB - Archeological ceramic paste material typically consists of a mix of a clay matrix and various millimeter and sub-millimeter sized mineral inclusions. Micro X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is a standard compositional classification tool and in this work we propose and demonstrate an improved fluorescence map processing protocol where the mineral inclusions are automatically separated from the clay matrix to allow independent statistical analysis of the two parts. Application of this protocol allowed us to enhance the discrimination between different ceramic shards compared with the standard procedure of working with only the spatially averaged elemental concentrations. Using the new protocol, we performed an initial compositional classification of a set of 83 ceramic shards from the western slopes of the south central Andean region in the Arica y Parinacota region (Chile). Comparing the classifications obtained using the new versus the old (average concentrations only) protocols, we found that some samples were erroneously classified with the old protocol. From an archaeological perspective, a broad and heterogeneous regional sample set was used in this experimental study due to the fact that this was the first such analysis to be performed on ceramics from this region. This allowed a general overview to be obtained, however further work on more specific sample sets will be necessary to extract concrete archaeological conclusions.
KW - Archaeology
KW - XRF
KW - ceramics
KW - image processing
KW - micro x-ray fluorescence
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84990862263&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0003702816654153
DO - 10.1177/0003702816654153
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84990862263
SN - 0003-7028
VL - 70
SP - 1759
EP - 1769
JO - Applied Spectroscopy
JF - Applied Spectroscopy
IS - 10
ER -