Geological Society of America, Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts. William C. Johnson, Department of Geography, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045. (October 25–28, 1993)
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 323 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0883-6353
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The 1993 meeting offered 184 sessions, many of which were symposia (invited papers) and theme sessions. The Archaeological Geology Division sponsored a theme session, poster session, and symposium. The reader is referred to Abstracts with Programs, Geological Society of America, v. 25, no. 6, 1993. Fifteen papers were presented in the theme session. The first presentation, by Henry Schwarcz, explained the application of U-series dating to prehistoric archaeological sites via age determination of travertine, tufa, lacustrine marls, pedogenic carbonates, and tooth enamel, and the potential of thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) to increase precision. Another application of isotopic analysis, presented by Allison Cormie, revealed a linear relationship between hydrogen isotopis ratios (deltaD) of white-tailed deer bone collagen and growing season rain deltaD, which may potentially permit paleoclimatic reconstructions because of the relationship of the latter to temperature. Michel Lamothe (with C. Chapdelaine) illustrated, with examples from paleoindian sites in Quebec, how the precision of thermoluminescence (TL) ages may be improved greatly by deriving the isochron age from the slope of the line created by plotting of the paleodoses and internal dosages.
Nick Cook (with I. Davidson) described the use of x-ray defractometry (XRD) in demonstrating that the composition of paint and ochre samples from rock paintings in northwestern Queensland, Australia were, despite color differences, of similar composition; color differences were due to the relative instability of one of the components, goethite. Basil Gomez (with M. Rautman, H. Neff, and M. Glascock) noted that through the use of neutron activation analysis (NAA) on Bronze Age and Roman ceramics from the Vasilikos Valley, southern Cypress, it was possible to identify three compositional patterns which were associated with distinct ceramic classes and to relate the ceramics to extant clay sources. Elizabeth Skokan explained that, by combining NAA with petrographic analysis on ceramics, sediments, and granite a t a Woodland Period site in northeastern Minnesota, it is possible to differentiate between technology and raw materials used in ceramic production. Christine Shriner (with C. Ambers) reported that petrographic analysis of ceramics from the Mann site in Indiana and of reference materials after experimental firings indicated that 90% of the sherds correlated with locally available raw materials and that short firing times had been used at 500-800°C. Raymond Buyce demonstrated through the microscopic analysis of thin sections that, despite reported claims by King Herod the Great that Caesarea Maritima, Israel was built from the finest imported stone, most stone used was locally derived from a calcitecemented sandstone called Kurkar, whereas some of the street pavers were of imported Cretaceous dolomites from the Mt. Carmel region.
From his study of lithic sources for ancient Carthage, Reuben Bullard observed that a variety of rock was used and lithologies and sources changed systematically through