The Development of a Low-Cost and High-Throughput Dating System for Prehistoric Ceramics

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的，加州州立大学长滩分校材料、环境和社会综合研究所(IIRMES)的研究人员将利用NSF重大研究仪器资金开发一种新的史前陶瓷测年工具。材料科学家获得的结果表明，低烧陶瓷，如砖、瓦和陶器，通过高度规则的吸水过程增加重量和膨胀，时间尺度从几周到几千年不等。因此，低烧成陶瓷的年龄可以通过高度精确地测量初始重量，然后进行脱羟基(在500℃以上烧成)，然后在5到10天内精确监测重量增加来确定重新羟化的速度。拟议中的新仪器将在受控环境中自动执行这些步骤，以便能够以低成本测定大量陶瓷的年代。在考古学中，确定文物的年代是该学科成功的核心。多年来，考古学家利用了广泛的测年技术：放射性碳测年、发光测年、树轮测年、黑铁矿水合作用、电子自旋共振、铀/钍系列测年等。每种技术最适合于特定的材料和特定的时间范围。在过去的10,000年里，陶瓷技术在世界多个地区独立发明，由于陶瓷是耐用的，考古学家经常在世界许多地区的考古遗址发现数以千计(或更多)的陶器碎片、瓷砖、砖块和小雕像。因此，有效的陶瓷年代测定技术对这一学科特别有价值。然而，不幸的是，发光，目前用于陶瓷测年的主要技术，相对困难和昂贵。初步实验表明，重羟化法具有很高的精密度，测量和仪器相对简单。对于大量同时测量的配置，重新羟化有可能大幅降低每个样本的成本，从而显著增加任何给定考古项目可以运行的日期数量。此外，仪器的相对简单意味着它可以传播到广泛的实验室环境中。由NSF支持的项目正在IIRMES-CSULB进行，旨在开发优化的仪器和方案，以便高效地生产陶瓷的再羟化测量。自动化仪器系统将保持重新羟基化测年方法的精确度，同时显著提高样品吞吐量。项目负责人预计，新的仪器将对考古研究产生重要的，甚至是革命性的影响。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)Researchers at the Institute for Integrated Research in Materials, Environments, and Societies (IIRMES), California State University - Long Beach (CSULB) will use NSF Major Research Instrumentation funding to develop a new instrument for dating prehistoric ceramics. Results obtained by materials scientists indicate that low-fired ceramics, such as bricks, tiles, and pottery, gain weight and expand by a process of water absorption that is highly regular on time scales from weeks to millennia. The age of a low-fired ceramic can thus be obtained via highly precise measurement of initial weight, followed by dehydroxylation (firing above 500oC), followed by precise monitoring of weight gain over five to ten days in order to establish the rate of rehydroxylation. The proposed new instrument will automate these steps within a controlled environment to enable large numbers of ceramics to be dated at low cost. In archaeology, determination of the age of artifacts is central to the success of the discipline. Over the years, archaeologists have made use of a wide array of dating techniques: radiocarbon dating, luminescence dating, tree-ring dating, obsidian hydration, electron spin resonance, uranium/thorium series dating and so on. Each technique is best for particular materials and particular time ranges.Ceramic technology was invented independently in multiple world regions during the past 10,000 years, and, since ceramics are durable, archaeologists routinely find broken pieces of pottery, tiles, bricks, and figurines by the thousands (or more) on archaeological sites in many regions of the world. Effective techniques for dating ceramics are thus particularly valuable for the discipline. Unfortunately, however, luminescence, the main technique currently used for dating ceramics, is relatively difficult and expensive. Initial experiments have shown that the rehydroxylation method promises very high precision with relatively simple measurements and instruments. Configured for large numbers of simultaneous measurements, rehydroxylation has the potential to reduce per sample cost dramatically, thus dramatically increasing the number of dates that can be run on any given archaeological project. Moreover, the relative simplicity of the instrumentation means that it could be disseminated to a wide range of laboratory settings.The NSF-supported project being undertaken at IIRMES-CSULB seeks to develop instrumentation and protocols that are optimized for efficient production of rehydroxylation measurements on ceramics. The automated instrument system will retain the precision of the rehydroxylation dating method while dramatically increasing the rate of sample throughput. The project directors anticipate that the new instrumentation will have important, even revolutionary, impacts on archaeological research.