skip to navigation
ADS Main Website
Help
|
Login
/
Browse by Series
/
Series
/ Journal Issue
J Archaeol Sci 21 (5)
Title
The title of the publication or report
Title:
J Archaeol Sci 21 (5)
Series
The series the publication or report is included in
Series:
Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume
Volume number and part
Volume:
21 (5)
Publication Type
The type of publication - report, monograph, journal article or chapter from a book
Publication Type:
Journal
Year of Publication
The year the book, article or report was published
Year of Publication:
1994
Note
Extra information on the publication or report.
Note:
Date Of Issue From: 1994
Source
Where the record has come from or which dataset it was orginally included in.
Source:
BIAB (The British Archaeological Bibliography (BAB))
Created Date
The date the record of the pubication was first entered
Created Date:
20 Jan 2002
Please click on an Article link to go to the Article Details.
Article Title
Access Type
Author / Editor
Page
Start/End
Abstract
Post-mortem transformations of sterols in bog body tissues
Richard P Evershed
Robert C Connolly
577 - 583
Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry has been employed to analyse the sterol composition of lipid extracts of the tissue (skin and muscle) samples taken from a recently excavated bog body (Lindow). The results are compared and contrasted with parallel analyses performed on peat collected adjacent to the buried body. The data obtained provide clear indications of the post-mortem molecular transformations mediated by micro-organisms (gut micro-flora) endogenous to the body at the time of death and possibly exogenous bacteria, invading the body from the surrounding peat following burial. Comparison of sterol composition of the body tissues and of the peat shows that the mobility of sterols in the aqueous peat bog environment is restricted because of their inherent hydrophobic properties.
Application of petrofabric and phase equilibria analysis to the study of a potsherd
Anthony R Philpotts
607 - 618
This paper describes how two standard materials analysis techniques using a petrographic microscope and x-ray diffractometer can be used to determine the fabrication method and firing temperature of a ceramic vessel even when only a small sherd is available. The amount clay is deformed during construction of a vessel depends on the fabrication method. Use of the coiling technique, for example, would involve more deformation than the slab method. The amount of stretching can be calculated from the degree of preferred orientation of elongate pieces of temper in the ceramic, as measured in a thin section cut through the sherd. The method was applied to an example from the USA tempered with shell, quartz and grass. The shell had completely dissolved away and the grass had burned during firing, to leave elongate cavities in the ceramic. The quartz grains, which are also elongate, are interpreted to be knapping debitage. The maximum degree of stretching calculated from the preferred orientation of this temper is only 2.3, which indicates that the vessel was fabricated from slabs rather than from coils. An x-ray image of a large part of the reconstructed vessel confirms the presence of these slabs, which are about 10cm long and range in height from 2 to 5cm. This image also indicates that the slabs were added in a counter-clockwise direction, which suggests manufacture by a right-handed potter. Although the surface of the vessel is tan coloured, most of the ceramic is black due to the reduced state of iron in the interior of the vessel. Burning of the grass temper during firing produced reducing conditions in the interior of the vessel wall that allowed wüstite (FexO) to form along with magnetite (Fe3O4). The unit cell dimension of the wüstite, measured by x-ray diffraction, indicates a composition that can only coexist with magnetite at 880ºC. This is believed to be the maximum temperature reached during firing of the vessel. The black, reduced ceramic is not wetted by water, whereas the red oxidised surface material is. The grass temper, which produced the reduced ceramic may therefore have been added to the clay to make a more impervious vessel.
The study of molecular markers of human activity: the use of coprostanol in the soil as an indicator of human faecal material
P H Bethell
L J Goad
Richard P Evershed
J Ottaway
619 - 632
Coprostanol is a metabolic product of cholesterol, the major sterol in human faeces and as such routinely used as a marker for modern sewage pollution in marine/lacustrine sediments. Here, it is applied to archaeological soils/sediments to detect faecal material. Solvent extraction of the soil total lipids was followed by fractionation using thin layer chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), using selected ion monitoring (SIM) to detect and quantify specific compounds. Samples from a range of sources were analysed, including modern latrine deposits, a seventeenth-century garderobe, a medieval garderobe and two suspected Roman cess-pits. Coprostanol and its homologues were detected not only in the modern and aged cess samples, but also in the control samples, suggesting its ubiquitous occurrence in the environment, albeit at low concentration. However, by measuring the relative abundances and ratios of the stanols, a chemical signature distinctive of faecal material could be established, independent of the simple occurrence of coprostanol in the soil. It was shown that coprostanol, and its homologues produced by the same microbial mechanism in the gut, were reliable markers of the presence of faeces in soils when found in the appropriate relative abundances. A method of analysing very small quantities of specific molecular marker compounds preserved in soils has thus been applied to archaeological materials, enabling a particular organic residue to be identified where conventional physical methods of analyses might not be successful.
Stepwise discriminant analysis in archaeometry: a critique
Michael J Baxter
659 - 666
Discriminant analysis is widely used in archaeometry and the use of stepwise selection procedures is common. It is also common to judge the success of an analysis by the ability to correctly allocate specimens to groups using the resubstitution procedure. This paper argues, by way of example, that such procedures may often mislead as to the success of an analysis, with the less biased cross-validation procedure producing more realistic results. Includes an `Appendix: Winchester Romano-British vessel glass compositions' (665-6).