Inferences about Prehistoric Ceramics and People in Southeast Missouri: Results of Ceramic Compositional Analysis

Abstract

Ceramic compositional studies using Instrument Neutron Activation Analysis indicates that it is possible to distinguish between ceramics manufactured from clays originating in the Central Mississippi River valley and clays originating in the Eastern Ozarks. The study also documents that shell-tempered ceramics were being made from Eastern Ozark clays during the period A.D. 700 to A.D. 1000. Shell-tempered ceramics made from clays originating in the Western Lowlands also are found at sites in the Eastern Ozarks during this time period, providing evidence for interaction between the Eastern Ozarks and Central Mississippi River valley.

Archaeological investigation of trade and exchange

“…But the only mention of ceramics in a substantive context is Vehik and Baugh's (Chapter 9) documentation of Caddoan and Southwestern pottery on the southern Plains. Recent and ongoing sourcing studies of pottery from the Midwest (e.g., Lynott et al 1993;O'Brien et al 1995;Stoltman 1991), Southeast (e.g., Steponaitis et al 1996), and New England (Lizee et al 1995) promise to bring ceramics into the mainstream of eastern North American trade studies in the near future.…”

The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas Vol. 2

“…Neutron activation analysis of ceramics at MURR, which consists of two irradiations and three gamma counts, constitutes a superset of the procedures used at most other NAA laboratories (Glascock 1992;Neff 1992Neff , 2000. As discussed in detail by Glascock (1992), a short irradiation is carried out through the pneumatic tube irradiation system.…”

“…The interpretation of compositional data obtained from the analysis of archeological materials is discussed in detail elsewhere (e.g., Baxter and Buck 2000;Bieber et al 1976;Bishop and Neff 1989;Glascock 1992;Harbottle 1976;Neff 2000) and will only be summarized here. The main goal of data analysis is to identify distinct homogeneous groups within the analytical database.…”

Chemical characterization of some potsherd pavements from parts of Yorubaland in southwestern Nigeria

“…Obsidian, andesites and basalts sourcing, has been a mainstay in provenance studies (Jones et al, 1997), but recent attempts to source steatite or soapstone (Allen et al, 1975;Ige and Swanson, 2008), and even trees (Durand et al, 1999) have shown that these lines of inquiry can be quite informative. Despite success in many areas worldwide with sourcing pottery (Bishop et al, 1988;Lynott et al, 2000), this avenue of research has been virtually ignored by Nigerian archaeologists. A recent pilot project in the Igbomina area of the northern part of Yorubaland using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) (Usman et al, 2005a,b) is a significant contribution to the characterization of these objects.…”