PROVENANCE STUDY OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RAW MATERIAL USING LA-ICP-MS
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | With the increasing interest of archaeologists and geologists in ancient raw materials and their provenance there was a need to develop nondestructive analytical methods with low limits of detection. Such a method with a low level of destructivity can be LA-ICP-MS (Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry). One of the major benefits of LA-ICP-MS method is a relatively simple sample preparation or even no preparation of the analyzed sample. On the other hand simple sample preparation is disadvantaged by relatively difficult process of optimization of the measuring parameters such as pulse frequency, diameter of a laser beam and its energy. Also the process of data calibration and quantification is quite complicated and requires the use of standard reference material. This work presents preliminary results of LA-ICP-MS analysis of samples made from porcellanite, which was commonly used as a raw material for manufacturing stone tools in the past. Set of analyzed samples included both source material and artifacts mainly from Czech Republic. One sample came also from Poland. NIST SRM 610 was used as a calibration material for quantification purposes. The resulting data were than subjected to multivariate statistics including Principal component analysis (PCA), which represents an essential part of multivariate data analysis. Our results indicate that LA-ICP-MS is a suitable method for provenance determination of the porcellanite material. |
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