Application of Diatom Analysis (Provenience) in Archaeological Ceramics: an experimental approach

7) DE LA FUENTE, GUILLERMO ADRIAN

Hungarian National Museum, Dept. of Information.

Simposio; 31st. International Symposium of Archaeometry; 1998

Hungarian National Museum, Dept. of Information. Theme Session: "Experimental Archaeology and its impact on scientific archaeology"

Although diatom analysis has been used as an adjunct to archaeological enquiry for over 30 - 40 years, there are very few publications exemplifying its use, and diatom results are often relegated to specialists appendices in archaeological reports. Provenience analysis of ceramic artifacts is a relatively new field of diatomology-archaeology interdisciplinary research and it has a great potential to solve archaeological problems related with clay sourcing for pottery-making in the past. This paper presents an overview of main applications of diatom analysis to archaeological pottery to clarify some methodological and technical issues as well as interpretative ones. Results on an ongoing  research in Northwestern Argentina are presented and discussed.