The Utility of Shell Temper for Ceramic Analysis

密西西比州立大学的Evan Peacock博士和Brenda柯克兰博士，沿着密苏里州大学的Renasinie Renson博士将进行研究，测试一种追踪过去人口流动和贸易网络的新方法。了解古代人口趋势和经济联系是解开任何特定地区历史的关键。过去的定居点是如何相互联系的？商品在哪里生产，如何从市场流向消费者？特定的定居点是否由于控制货物流动的能力而变得突出？古代人口流动与历史上已知的美洲原住民或其他后裔群体的分布有何关系？随着化学分析人工制品的新仪器的开发，对这些主题的兴趣也在增长。例如，考古学家用各种方法对古代陶器碎片进行化学分析，并试图将它们与野外采集的粘土样品相匹配，以确定陶器粘土最初是在哪里获得的。虽然这种方法已经产生了一些令人兴奋的结果，但它被许多因素所复杂化。许多不同的粘土层可以出现在一个小的区域，粘土层可以是化学均匀的一个非常大的区域，或陶工可能有不同的粘土混合在一起时，使陶器。如果要更充分地实现陶瓷采购对解决人类学和历史意义问题的承诺，解决这个问题是必要的。这项研究将有助于了解美国原住民的史前史，并有助于美国人了解这个国家过去的一个重要组成部分。除了用化学方法采购陶器粘土外，还有一种方法是分析陶工在粘土中混合的其他材料;这种额外的材料被称为“回火”。大约从公元1000年开始，压碎的淡水贻贝壳在北美东部的大片地区被用作陶器的回火。随着淡水贻贝的生长，它们将栖息在溪流沃茨中的化学特征构建到它们的贝壳中。因此，来自不同排水系统的贝壳在化学上是不同的。通过对作为食物垃圾丢弃的贝壳与不同地点陶器的回火进行化学比较，考古学家理论上可以确定陶器制作的精确溪流，甚至溪流段。皮科克博士和他的同事们将通过分析从密西西比的亚祖盆地的几个遗址中发现的贝壳和贝壳回火陶器来测试这种新方法。亚祖盆地是一片广阔的土地，有许多不同的河流将中部大陆与墨西哥湾连接起来，并提供了现成的旅行路线，沿着哪些陶器或其他文物可能在几个世纪前进行了交易。将使用电感耦合等离子体质谱仪进行分析，仅需要少量的壳体或壳体回火。还将探索使用单个元素，如锶的同位素来改进该方法。作为一个特殊的考古测试案例，陶器以前确定为风格“异国情调”和丢弃的贝壳从乔治湖网站，一个巨大的，约。将分析密西西比州亚祖县1,000年前的定居点。如果成功的话，这种方法应该适用于世界上任何一个生产贝壳回火陶器的地方。

Dr. Evan Peacock and Dr. Brenda Kirkland, Mississippi State University, along with Dr. Virginie Renson, University of Missouri, will undertake research to test a new method for tracing past human population movements and trade networks. Understanding ancient demographic trends and economic links is key for unraveling the history of any particular area. How interconnected were settlements in the past? Where were goods produced, and how did they flow from market to consumer? Did particular settlements gain prominence due to an ability to control the flow of goods? How do ancient population movements relate to the historically known distribution of Native American or other descendant groups? Interest in such topics has grown as new instruments for chemically analyzing artifacts have been developed. For example, archaeologists chemically analyze ancient pottery sherds using a variety of methods and try to match them to clay samples taken in the field, to determine where the pottery clay was originally obtained. While this approach has produced some exciting results, it is complicated by a number of factors. Many different clay beds can occur over a small area, a clay bed can be chemically homogenous over a very large area, or potters may have mixed different clays together when making pottery. Addressing this problem is necessary if the promise of ceramic sourcing for addressing questions of anthropological and historical import is to be more fully realized. The research will contribute to understanding the prehistory of United States Native Americans and serve to inform Americans on an important part of the country's past.An alternative to chemically sourcing pottery clay is to analyze other materials mixed with the clay by potters; such extra materials are called "temper." Beginning about AD 1000, crushed freshwater mussel shell was used as pottery temper over a huge expanse of eastern North America. As freshwater mussels grow, they build the chemical signature of the stream waters they inhabit into their shells. Shells from different drainages therefore are chemically distinct. By chemically comparing shells discarded as food waste with temper from pottery at different sites, archaeologists theoretically can pinpoint the precise stream, or even stream segment, where the pottery was made. Dr. Peacock and his colleagues will test this new method by analyzing shells and shell-tempered pottery recovered from several sites in the Yazoo Basin of Mississippi, a vast landscape drained by many different streams that connected the mid-continent with the Gulf of Mexico and provided ready travel routes along which pots or other artifacts may have been traded centuries ago. Analysis will be done using an Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer, for which only small amounts of shell or shell temper are needed. The use of individual elements, such as isotopes of Strontium, to refine the method, also will be explored. As a particular archaeological test case, pottery previously identified as stylistically "exotic" and discarded shells from the Lake George site, a massive, ca. 1,000 year-old settlement in Yazoo County, Mississippi, will be analyzed. If successful, this method should be applicable to any place in the world where shell-tempered pottery was produced.