With National Science Foundation support, Drs. T. Douglas Price and James Burton will purchase a Finnegan Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS) to serve as principal analytic instrument at the University of Wisconsin Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry. It will replace a current ICP-AES which is nearly 10 years old and nearing the end of its useful lifespan. The ICP-MS has the demonstrated capability of determining elemental abundances at, or below, parts-per-trillion levels and the capability of measuring individual isotopes for isotope-ratio studies. The machine has a laser ablation sample introduction system which allows rapid analyses of either wet or dry samples in aqueous solution or as emissions from a laser beam focused upon solid matrices. It can thus be used to analyze a wide range of archaeological materials and the presence of a microprobe permits micron-scale as well as bulk analysis. The laboratory has contributed significantly to the analysis of a wide range of archaeological materials: ceramics, metals, soil and human skeletal and dental remains. The research group has developed rapid methods to determine trace element signatures of pottery. It has pioneered the use of barium/calcium ratios as indicators of past diet, examined techniques to reconstruct human activities from anthropogenetic soils and employed strontium ratios in human bone and teeth to determine migration history. It has also collaborated with many researchers, both postdoctoral and student to address a wide variety of specific archaeological issues. With this new instrument the laboratory will expand its scope from elemental analyses to carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements which provide insight into human diet and past environmental conditions. The laboratory has both provided general service to the anthropological community and worked to develop new analytic approaches. It has also served an important training function. The ICP-MS will permit all of these aspects to be expanded the pursued with greater efficiency.
