John Murray, Graduate student, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
The Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies held the 2022 Great Scientific Exchange (SciX) conference from October 2-7 in Covington, Kentucky. As a member society, the Society for Archaeological Sciences (SAS) hosted an “Art and Archaeology” section chaired by Mary Kate Donais. Within this section, SAS sponsored the annual invited speaker symposium titled “Student Research in Archaeological Chemistry,” of which I had the honor to chair for this year’s meeting. As an archaeologist who primarily engages with chemistry vicariously through his collaborators, I was happy to experience a new conference and present on research that is outside of my comfort zone.
The student session was diverse in the archaeological materials analyzed, the spatio-temporal range of the research, and the methods applied. Two talks focused on stone tool raw material sourcing during the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Sydney James from Arizona State University combined geochemical analyses of obsidian in East Africa with geospatial methods to better understand how MSA humans were procuring obsidian raw material over time. The second talk on stone tools was my own. My presentation focused on the development an empirical calibration for sourcing South African silcrete raw material with portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF). Another speaker also utilized pXRF, but on a different archaeological material – ostrich eggshell. Hannah Keller from Yale University discussed the use of pXRF as a method to identify ochre residues on ostrich eggshell fragments through actualistic experimental research and provided a preliminary archaeological analysis from a Late Pleistocene site in Malawi. The final two talks jump forward in time. Ahana Ghosh of the Indian Institute of Technology discussed variation in residues on ceramic vessels from South-Asia, specifically focusing on better understanding food processing within and between Harrapan settlements and whether there is a relationship between function and form. Iride Tomažič of the University of Michigan addressed the question – can we detect contamination levels in teeth from archaeological contexts? The talk focused on the analysis of animal teeth using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and laser ablation ICP-MS (LA-ICP-MS) from three Bronze Age settlements with evidence of metallurgy from the Southern Carpathian Basin.
Outside of the interesting talks from the student session, there were numerous posters associated with the Art and Archaeology section that spanned multiple materials and analytical methods. For instance, Andrew Zipkin of Eurofins EAG Laboratories presented a poster that focused on the application of LA-ICP-MS to source silcrete from South Africa and Magdalena Jackson of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute discussed the application of portable laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) and XRF to archaeological material. There are many more that cannot fit within this summary – I highly suggest that you check them out on the official program or the SAS guide to SciX 2022.
Overall, SciX 2022 was a great success. Outside of the talks, the participants in the SAS section made new friendships, connections, and future collaborators. Apparently, my only failure was not having a chance to eat at Skyline Chili, which was recommended by a good friend and Cincinnati native.
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