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THE PROBLEM The problem that stimulated this research concerns the nature of the feature clusters at the Lasley Vore site and the origin of the people who produced the clusters. Two assumptions were made: (1) that the contents of the features re®ect activities that occurred in the space immediately around the features; and (2) that the feature clusters had integrity, that is, they clustered because they were dug by people of the same or similar residential units. If the latter assumption is true, then it might be possible to determine if the inhabitants of speci¤c residential units were the same as, or different from, inhabitants of other residential units on the site. An important aspect of this question is whether or not the inhabitants of the site all derived from the same place. Since pottery was recovered from most feature clusters, perhaps it can be employed to resolve this issue. That is, we know that pots are usually made from clays that derive from around the same place as their manufacture , for the simple reason that clay is very heavy and one would not wish to cart it too far. If a product were to be transported, it would more likely have been in the form of a ¤nished pot than the raw clay. Thus if the inhabitants of the areas around the various feature clusters all lived permanently at the Lasley Vore settlement , then their pottery should have been made from the same clay sources. However , if some groups came from other regions to camp at the village for awhile, then the clay matrix in their pottery should be different. ATOMIC ABSOR PTION SPECTROPHOTOMETRY ANALYSIS The clays that form the matrix for pottery are composed of a series of elements determined by the source bedrock from which the initial weathering took place. The nature and abundance of these elements can be characterized by various chemical and atomic methods, providing a way by which speci¤c parts of a prehistoric habitation can be compared with one another. Such a method used in this analysis is called atomic absorption spectrophotometry, or AAS. In AAS, light of a particular wavelength (one which will be absorbed by the Appendix 10 Pottery Clays Kenneth L. Shingleton Jr. and George H. Odell Appendix 10 is a synopsis of the research reported in the master’s thesis Shingleton completed in 1991 for the Department of Anthropology, University of Tulsa, and in Shingleton et al. (1994). Please look to these sources for background information and connecting arguments. element of interest) is emitted from a hollow cathode lamp, passes through an acetylene/air ®ame, and is focussed on a monochromator and then a photomultiplier detector. As the light passes through the ®ame, it is absorbed by atoms of the element in question. This is then detected by the photomultiplier as a reduction in the amount of light. Modern atomic absorption spectrophotometers report the concentration of the element on a digital readout (Rice 1987). There are advantages and disadvantages to the AAS technique. Most metal elements (major, minor, and trace) can be tested at the level of 10 parts per million to a level of precision of +/-2 percent. Nonmetals and rare earth elements, however, are not identi¤able using this method. A high degree of accuracy can also be achieved, particularly if the instrument is periodically recalibrated with a standard solution containing a known concentration of the ions of the elements being studied. Elements must be tested separately, placing a speci¤c lamp in the instrument and calibrating it accordingly, each time a set of samples is run. Once this calibration is complete, an entire set of samples can be tested for concentrations of that element in a relatively short time (Rice 1987). However, since the sample must be aspirated into the acetylene/air ®ame, it must be in solution, and sample preparation is a widely varied procedure. The uses of this technique in archaeology are discussed in a number of papers (Bishop et al 1982; Bromund et al. 1976; Gritton and Magalousis 1978; Harbottle 1982; Hughes et al. 1976; Tennent et al. 1984; Winefordner 1971). The technique has been applied to archaeological pottery in a limited number of studies. An early application was by Bower et al. (1975) on ceramic artifacts from Pella of the Decapolis in Greece. Methodological improvements were made by Torres et al. (1984), who resolved problems involving the sampling of individual sherds by drilling small cores in pottery fragments, which he...

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