Speaker
Dr
Sheldon Landsberger
(University of Texas)
Description
Minimizing Sample Sizes while Achieving Accurate Elemental Concentrations in Neutron Activation Analysis of Precious Pottery
S. Landsberger1 J. Yellin2
1Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, USA 78758
2The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Manufacturing containers, body adornments, paintings, sculptures, etc. are one of the major characteristics of human endeavor into art. Being able to achieve provenance of these objects gives modern humans the link to past lives of major cultural groups and civilizations. The field of archaeological forensics has been very active for the past century and a half. When analyzing pottery, ceramics, and other archeological finds, neutron activation analysis (NAA) is one of the two preferred methods for elemental analysis due to the large number of elements that can be measured precisely and accurately using a small sample size. An excellent overview of nuclear techniques for cultural heritage research has been published by the International Atomic Energy Agency [1]. The current methodologies usually require about 100 – 400 mg of the specimen to acquire representative results. Typically these quantities for NAA are relatively large when dealing with precious pottery or sherds from broken pottery vessels, the most common artifacts found during excavation of archaeological sites. NAA can be done with much smaller samples but a sample too small may not reflect the bulk composition. Very recently the application of NAA to micro gram scale of solid samples has been explored for extraterrestrial samples [2]. To test this hypothesis in a pilot project 10 mg samples from Tunisian pottery were examined by NAA to ascertain if samples at such small quantities could give representative and meaningful results. Typically sample sizes less than 100 mg are considered to be subject to inhomogeneity. We have demonstrated in this study that the combination of micro-sampling and various methods in NAA including is an ideal method of quantifying trace elements in pottery. Methodologies in thermal and epithermal NAA in conjunction with Compton suppression has resulted in a wide range of elements with sample weights of only 10 mg. These results will help develop new and improved methods of analysis of precious pottery and ceramics while preserving as much of the pottery pieces as possible.
References
1. International Atomic Energy Agency (2011) Nuclear techniques for cultural heritage research Austria, Vienna IAEA-1501
2. Sekimoto S, Shirai N, Ebihara M (2015) Application of neutron activation analysis to micro gram scale of solid samples. J Radioanal Nucl Chem DOI 10.1007/s10967-015-4370-4.
Primary author
Dr
Sheldon Landsberger
(University of Texas)
Co-author
Dr
Joseph Yellin
(2The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,Israel)
