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Sun, 27 Jun 2004 12:31:56 -0400 |
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Hello to all!
I have surfaced momentarily from our digs at the West Point Foundry to
check my email this weekend. This thread is close to my heart, as many of
you know- I have enthusiastically advocated the use of materials science
in the study of domestic earthenware for some time now. A number of the
participants at the Council for Northeast Historical Archaeology in
Wilmington DE two years ago and at the Society for Historical Archaeology
meeting which followed in St. Louis discussed this at great length.
The general consensus is that the archaeological community is ready to
make a real jump into materials science analyses, but it seems desperately
important to reach some agreement on which techniques and labs will build
the databases. If we are not careful now, we may find ourselves with 5 or
20 mutually incomparable databases of ceramic and clay chemistry. Most of
you know already that data generated with neutron activation analysis is
not comparable with ESM or PIXIE and vice versa.
This is not to argue for a single paradigmatic approach to studying
ceramic, but rather for a consensus surrounding this particular research
theme (regional economy, networks of trade, etc). We need to consider
cost, quality, and volume.
Pardon my plugging my own dissertation on this particular topic- Potting
in Zion (2002). Studying Utah's potters in the nineteenth century, I
found that there was tremendous diversity of business models which
parallel the diverse social relations in which the potters built their
worlds. Some of my potters, for example, traveled 300-mile trips with
wagon loads of earthen- and stonewares. Urban potters maintained systems
of "neighboring" in their account books.
I have had great success with INAA at the MURR lab in Missouri. My final
data reports (which are under review now and will hopefully be out soon!)
regarding the materials science clearly show the potential power of INAA
as a good tool for our needs, supplemented with other techniques for other
research questions.
Anyway, I'm excited by the possibilities. I expect that when we start
looking, we will find that things were much more complicated than we
suspect...
Cheers to all,
Tim
PS. Please check out the revisions to our website for the West Point
Foundry! Updated with student essays reflecting upon each week's digging
and pics! http://www.westpointfoundry.org
--
I'm using Huskymail, so I'm not at my desktop!
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