Introduction: Magnetism and site formation processes in archaeology—2

✍ Scribed by Rob Sternberg

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 26 KB
• Volume: 14
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0883-6353
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1520-6548(199906)14:5<375::aid-gea1>3.0.co;2-0

✦ Synopsis

As a member of the Editorial Board of Geoarchaeology, I have had the pleasure of organizing this second special section on less traditional applications of magnetism at archaeological sites. The first special issue -13(1): January 1998 -focused on the use of magnetic susceptibility and other rock magnetic properties for reconstructing past environments and climate, and for lithic characterization. This second special section highlights the magnetization of archaeological features. Magnetic properties of features are affected by heating. The cultural use of fire can be inferred for certain lithologies from in situ magnetic measurements of soil susceptibilities, which can be corroborated by additional laboratory measurements of remanence properties (Morinaga et al.). This study is also a nice example of the use of experimental firings to replicate archaeological magnetizations. Other laboratory techniques, including magnetic properties which are grain-size dependent, can also distinguish fired from non-fired archaeological sediments (Peters and Thomspon). Well-fired, undisturbed materials have stable directions of magnetization which are not too different from the present magnetic field. Aberrant directions or unstable magnetizations can indicate mechanical movement or remagnetization of a feature, which can be due to natural or cultural transformation processes (Sternberg et al.). All these types of information can be useful for examining nonchronometric archaeomagnetic problems. We welcome the increased attention to such applications of magnetic methods.