With NSF support Drs Christopher Stevenson and Mary Gurnick conduct research to advance and improve a recently proposed ceramic dating technique. Ceramic rehydroxylation dating (RHX) is a method applied to ancient ceramics to estimate the age of prehistoric pottery based upon the amount of water absorption after manufacture and firing in the kiln. This method has instantaneously captured the interest of a vast global audience of archaeologists who work diligently at developing and refining archaeological chronologies using ceramic materials from archaeological sites. Chronology building is particularly challenging in locations where simple earthen pottery with modest amounts of surface decoration are part of the cultural technology. This dating method which provides a quantitative age estimate for an individual fragment has the potential to be highly informative and widely applied. Poor control over the timing of events in the past has restricted the ability to evaluate hypotheses about past behavior but RHX dating has the potential to eliminate much of this current constraint.
The ceramic rehydroxylation dating method to be refined in this research is highly advantageous for reasons of availability, technical simplicity, and reduced cost. In many parts of the world, later phases of prehistory have an ample ceramic record and pottery fragments are found in many contexts. Thus the range of potentially useful samples is high. As currently structured, the experimental design uses conventional technologies such as infrared spectroscopy and therefore application of the dating method has the potential to remain very affordable. In this research, the investigators will clarify how the rehydroxylation process may vary with ceramic composition and firing temperature and seek to keep the dating method as straight forward as possible and within a single technology; that of infrared spectroscopy.
The collaborators in this research come from the fields of archaeometry, chemistry, and historic/prehistoric archaeology at established institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), and Richard Bland College (RBC). The AMNH has access to large well-documented artifact collections of known age and is currently engaged in a long-term study of prehistoric ceramics on St. Catherine's Island, Georgia. VCU an RBC bring basic instrumentation and expertise to the project that is relevant to the proposed research. The researchers have designed a set of experiments to understand the varying behavior of water adsorption in ceramics and have selected archaeological case examples that can properly evaluate the results.
The research team includes advanced researchers, two graduate students, and an undergraduate assistant who will participate in the experimental, evaluative, and publication phases. They will disseminate results at both the national, state, and local level through presentations, publications and small museum exhibits. The data collected will contribute to at least two advanced academic degrees. Undergraduate students will participate in the research. More broadly, the project will promote linkages between scientists and communities in the United States and internationally as the laboratory protocols are refined and the application of the method becomes increasingly applied.
