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4 - Common Mineral Components of the Archaeological Record

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Stephen Weiner
Affiliation:
Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
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Summary

Much of the hard work of an excavation involves removing the sediments from the site to reveal the architecture and/or the artifacts. Most of what is being removed in these buckets is the microscopic record – the archaeological record that is not visible to the naked eye. It often contains a wealth of important archaeological information in the form of microartifacts, biologically produced minerals, organic matter, and the minerals that make up the sediments themselves. Much can be learned about the archaeological record from these microscopic components, including from the minerals themselves: the subject of this chapter.

The potential information content embedded in minerals can be conveniently understood by analogy to the information content of a short text (Figure 4.1). Chemical elements are the basic components of a mineral. In most minerals, they are present in specific proportions (the chemical formula). Chemical elements often have different masses (isotopes), even though their chemical properties are identical. Furthermore, in certain minerals, chemical elements that have similar chemical properties can substitute some of the major chemical elements in the mineral. Both isotopic composition and chemical element substitutions (the substitutions are often referred to as trace elements) can provide archaeologically relevant information such as for radiocarbon dating, paleodiet reconstruction, and much more (Chapter 2).

The identification of the assemblage of minerals in a sediment can provide information on the source of the sediment, the manner in which it was transported to the site, and the modes of deposition at the site (site formation processes).

Type
Chapter
Information
Microarchaeology
Beyond the Visible Archaeological Record
, pp. 68 - 98
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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