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Ellery Frahm

Yale University, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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www.elleryfrahm.com • Research Faculty, Department of Anthropology & Council on Archaeological Studies, Yale University • Director, Yale Initiative for the Study of Ancient Pyrotechnology • Co-Editor-in-Chief, "Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports"

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SUNY: Stony Brook University

University of Vienna

Universidade do Algarve

Elham Ghasidian

Neanderthal Museum

Liubov Golovanova

Ekaterina Doronicheva

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Israel Hershkovitz

Tel Aviv University

Saman Heydari-Guran

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Papers by Ellery Frahm

Scales of toolstone transport in the Armenian Highlands during MIS 3: The contribution of Ararat-1 Cave (Ararat Depression) to reconstructing opportunities for social interactions

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2025

Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, ranging from around 57,000 to 29,000 years ago, is a period of sign... more Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, ranging from around 57,000 to 29,000 years ago, is a period of significant archaeological interest due to notable transitions in lithic technology and hominin populations. In Europe, this time saw the replacement of Middle Palaeolithic (MP) technologies associated with Neanderthals by Upper Palaeolithic (UP) technologies linked to anatomically modern humans (AMHs). This technological shift is conventionally attributed to a demographic turnover; however, the timing of this transition varied regionally. The presence of Neanderthals and AMHs in the Levant, western Europe, and elsewhere over extended periods complicates the narrative, suggesting asynchronous and regionally diverse associations of hominin species and lithic technologies. This study shifts the attention to potential technological and cultural transmissions among MP-and UP-making groups, emphasizing the roles of social and exchange networks. Recent data from the obsidian-rich Armenian Highlands enable us to consider the mobility and land use of these groups without the added complication of toolstone with different knapping qualities, so patterns more clearly reflect mobility patterns, land use strategies, and potential social connections of foraging groups. These results suggest that, while MP-making groups in MIS 3 had overlapping territories, the UP-making groups at Aghitu-3 had smaller movements on the landscape. In contrast, MIS 2 sites with UP lithic assemblages have resource territories that apparently overlapped much like those of the MIS 3 MP sites. The findings hint at the possibility that differing mobility and land use during MIS 3 might have contributed to the coexistence of distinct lithic technologies, potentially through social transmission rather than a direct replacement of hominin populations.

Archaeological obsidian sourcing: Looking from the first 60 years to the next

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2025

Obsidian sourcing (or provenancing) is the process by which obsidian artifacts are matched to the... more Obsidian sourcing (or provenancing) is the process by which obsidian artifacts are matched to the geological sources from which the raw material originated. Given that obsidian is a substance that has been used from the emergence of our genus to the 21st century, reconstructing the movement of obsidian artifacts has great relevance to a wide variety of research questions. Matching obsidian artifacts to their origins has been called “one of the success stories of archaeological science” as well as “one of the most productive and successful research programs of archaeological science” (Williams-Thorpe, 1995). Furthermore, it has been labeled as “a microcosm of the development of archaeological science” (Henderson, 2001), reflecting wider trends within archaeology. Identifying an artifact’s source is only a proximate goal: the ultimate aim is to elucidate human behavior in the past. Since its inception during the 1960s, a variety of technological and methodological advances have been incorporated into obsidian sourcing research around the world. The focus here is not an overview of global obsidian sourcing articles. Instead, this paper is organized according to a set of familiar questions: What? When? Who? Where? How? Why? What next? The goal here is to address how obsidian sourcing has been, is now, and can be used to better understand our past, eventually moving from generating data to developing archaeological models and theories.

Increasing obsidian diversity during the Chalcolithic Period at Yeghegis-1 Rockshelter (Armenia) reveals shifts in land use and social networks

Scientific reports, Apr 25, 2024

The newly excavated rockshelter of Yeghegis-1 in Armenia reflects an occupation of five centuries... more The newly excavated rockshelter of Yeghegis-1 in Armenia reflects an occupation of five centuries, as attested by radiocarbon dates from ∼ 4100 to 4000 cal BCE in the lowest layer to ∼ 3600-3500 cal BCE at the top. It is a partially collapsed cave in which pastoralists, we hypothesize, wintered with their herds. The stone tool assemblage is predominantly obsidian (92.1%), despite the shelter being > 60 km on foot from the nearest sources. We use obsidian sourcing to investigate two purported trends in the Southern Caucasus during the Chalcolithic Period: (1) occupation of more varied high-altitude environments and (2) more expansive social networks. Our data show both trends were dynamic phenomena. There was a greater balance in use of the nearest pasturelands over time, perhaps linked to risk management and/or resource sustainability. During later occupations, artifacts from distant sources reveal more extensive connections. This increase in connectivity likely played a central role in the shifts in societal complexity that gave rise to widely shared material culture throughout the Armenian Highlands around the start of the Early Bronze Age. In such a model, greater social connectivity becomes a key mechanism for, rather than a product of, the spread of cultural and/or technological innovations. The Chalcolithic Period of the Southern Caucasus (5000-3500 BCE) corresponds to a phase of increased copper production alongside the continued use of lithic technology, chronologically situated between the agricultural settlements of the Neolithic Period and the far-reaching Kura-Araxes material culture "package" of the Early Bronze Age. Despite the relevance of this time period for understanding the development of social complexity across the Southern Caucasus, relatively little is known about these transformations during the Chalcolithic in this region. Sagona 1 notes that, in the 20th century, the Chalcolithic "was an elusive period, characterized by fuzzy concepts, multiple traditions, and an array of patchy evidence weakly glued together by a small number of radiocarbon readings" from Soviet-era excavations. Work of that time, as described by Lyonnet 2 , was "extremely abundant and fundamental but often imprecise" and lacked dates, hindering the potential to make chronological correlations among sites. In contrast, the 21st century has seen a shift toward scientific collaboration between national and international research centers (e.g., the collaborative work that we report here). Collaboration at the Chalcolithic site of Areni-1 Cave, for example, has led to detailed chronological 3 , geoarchaeological 4 , botanical 5 , and faunal 6 results. Recent excavations have yielded a wealth of new data, much of it at odds with

Yeghegis-1 rockshelter site: new investigations into the late Chalcolithic of Armenia

Antiquity, Feb 1, 2024

Excavations at Yeghegis-1, a rockshelter in southern Armenia, reveal long-term human habitation f... more Excavations at Yeghegis-1, a rockshelter in southern Armenia, reveal long-term human habitation from the late fifth to mid-fourth millennia BC. Here, the authors present a preliminary overview of the materials recovered from the site and highlight the potential of ongoing research to shed light on Chalcolithic human lifeways in the region.

Magnetic studies of archaeological obsidian: Variability of eruptive conditions within obsidian flows is key to high-resolution artifact sourcing (Invited)

AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2013

High-resolution Chemostratigraphy Through a Nearshore, Mixed Carbonate-shale Succession of Late Ordovician Age (Sandbian-Katian) in the Laurentian Cratonic Interior

2015 AGU Fall Meeting, Dec 15, 2015

Identifying the origins of obsidian artifacts in the Deh Luran Plain (Southwestern Iran) highlights community connections in the Neolithic Zagros

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Oct 17, 2022

Exchange networks created by Neolithic pastoral transhumance have been central to explaining the ... more Exchange networks created by Neolithic pastoral transhumance have been central to explaining the distant transport of obsidian since chemical analysis was first used to attribute Near Eastern artifacts to their volcanic origins in the 1960s. Since then, critical reassessments of floral, faunal, and chronological data have upended long-held interpretations regarding the emergence of food production and have demonstrated that far-traveled, nomadic pastoralists were more myth than reality, at least during the Neolithic. Despite debates regarding their proposed conveyance mechanisms, obsidian artifacts’ transport has received relatively little attention compared with zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical lines of investigation. The rise of nondestructive and portable instruments permits entire obsidian assemblages to be traced to their sources, renewing their significance in elucidating connections among early pastoral and agricultural communities. Here we share our findings about the obsidian artifacts excavated from the sites of Ali Kosh and Chagha Sefid in the southern Zagros. In the 1960s and 1970s, 28 obsidian artifacts from the sites were destructively tested, and the remainder were sorted by color. Our results emphasize a dynamic, accelerating connectivity among the Early and Late Neolithic communities. Here we propose and support an alternative model for obsidian distribution among more settled communities. In brief, diversity in the obsidian assemblage accelerated diachronically, an invisible trend in the earlier studies. Our model of increasing population densities is supported by archaeological data and computational simulations, offering insights regarding the Neolithic Demographic Transition in the Zagros, an equivalent of which is commonly thought to have occurred around the world.

Obsidian exchange networks and highland-lowland interaction in the Lesser Caucasus borderlands

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in the Near East, but relatively few have focused o... more Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in the Near East, but relatively few have focused on obsidian exchange after the Early Bronze Age. Here, we present a multi-technique analysis of an assemblage of 111 obsidian artifacts from excavated Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (LBA-EIA; c. 15th-6th c BCE) contexts at Mtsvane Gora, southern Georgia. Because the site is situated in the lowland Kura Valley and the nearest obsidian sources are in the highlands to the south and west, obsidian provenance can serve as a proxy for mapping highland-lowland interactions. Chemical compositions analyzed via portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), electron microprobe analysis (EMPA), and laser ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), were compared with existing geological datasets of chemical analyses to identify the source of all but one of the artifacts analyzed. The results show that Chikiani, a source in the highlands of southern Georgia, was the geological origin of &gt;90% of the objects analyzed. While acknowledging that obsidian exchange is just one aspect of highland-lowland interaction, this finding implies that Mtsvane Gora&#39;s connections with the adjacent highlands were skewed towards greater engagement with some highland areas relative to others. More generally, the research suggests that geographic adjacency of highlands and lowlands does not necessarily mean that they were highly interconnected.

Introducing Barozh 12: a Middle Palaeolithic open-air site on the Edge of the Ararat Depression, Armenia

Using Image Analysis Software to Correlate Sherd Scans in the Field and X-Ray Element Maps in the Laboratory

This article is substantially based on the editorial published in volume 50(2) of Archaeometry, a... more

End of the line? Obsidian at Umm Qseir, a Halafian farmstead in the Syrian steppe

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2021

Abstract Obsidian sourcing in the Near East was principally developed to investigate the Neolithi... more Abstract Obsidian sourcing in the Near East was principally developed to investigate the Neolithic Revolution, but limitations of these early studies were soon recognized. Critics noted that sites included in the models span millennia and vary in size and function. Greater insight is offered by a more contextualized examination of the nature and timing of sites. Within the Neolithic sequence, one phase of considerable interest is the Halaf period (c. 6000–4500 BCE) in Northern Mesopotamia. The spread of Halaf “tradition,” arguably the earliest example of a widely shared material culture in the region, has been tied to varied hypotheses of movement (of people, objects, and/or ideas) that remain largely untested. The use of obsidian sourcing to investigate Halafian phenomena (e.g., the spread of Halaf ceramics, the practice of dryland farming) would ideally involve high temporal resolution and consider settlement function and scale (e.g., an early urban center, a small farming village). Umm Qseir, the smallest known Halaf site, fulfills both. Occupied for less than two centuries, Umm Qseir was an environmentally marginal farmstead managed year-round by just two or three families at a time. The closest contemporary settlement was more than 30 km to the north, within the conventional limits of dryland farming (annual rainfall > 250 mm). Here we reconstruct and refine obsidian sourcing data for Umm Qseir artifacts from 1990s and 2000s studies, and we present new data for a small assemblage. We also highlight techno-typological clues that elucidate production, use, and maintenance of such artifacts. Ultimately, such findings offer insights into the exchange strategy of Syrian steppe farmsteaders and reflect an important means of risk management.

Later Stone Age toolstone acquisition in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya: Portable XRF of Eburran obsidian artifacts from Leakey's excavations at Gamble's Cave II

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018

The complexities of Later Stone Age environmental and behavioral variability in East Africa remai... more The complexities of Later Stone Age environmental and behavioral variability in East Africa remain poorly defined, and toolstone sourcing is essential to understand the scale of the social and natural landscapes encountered by earlier human populations. The Naivasha-Nakuru Basin in Kenya's Rift Valley is a region that is not only highly sensitive to climatic changes but also one of the world's most obsidian-rich landscapes. We used portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses of obsidian artifacts and geological specimens to understand patterns of toolstone acquisition and consumption reflected in the early/middle Holocene strata (Phases 3-4 of the Eburran industry) at Gamble's Cave II. Our analyses represent the first geochemical source identifications of obsidian artifacts from the Eburran industry and indicate the persistent selection over time for high-quality obsidian from Mt. Eburru, ~20 km distant, despite changes in site occupation intensity that apparently correlate with changes in the local environment. This result may indicate resilience of Eburran foraging strategies during environmental shifts and, potentially, a cultural preference for a specific lithic material that overcame its accessibility changes. Testing such hypotheses requires a more extensive program of obsidian artifact sourcing. Our findings demonstrate the great potential for sourcing studies in the Rift Valley as well as underscore the amount of work that remains to be done.

Origin of an Early Upper Palaeolithic obsidian burin at Ksar Akil (Lebanon): Evidence of increased connectivity ahead of the Levantine Aurignacian?

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2019

Given the importance of the Levant in understanding the origins and dispersals of modern humans, ... more Given the importance of the Levant in understanding the origins and dispersals of modern humans, there has been great interest in archaeological evidence to support population movements between the Levant and adjacent regions. The link, if any, between the Aurignacian tradition across Europe and the "Levantine Aurignacian" is a particular focus. Ksar Akil in Lebanon not only is one of the most deeply stratified Levantine sites but also has the longest record of Upper Paleolithic behaviors, so it is a benchmark to which developments in the Levant are often compared. Schmidt and Zimmermann ( ) recently proposed that the European Aurignacian tradition might best be understood in terms of connectivity, as evidenced by long-distance lithic transfers that can act as a proxy for mobility and social networks. Here we document a previously unreported obsidian burin from Ksar Akil. Portable X-ray fluorescence reveals that it matches a source ≥700 km away on foot in central Turkey. Two recent dating programs have calculated ages of ~41-38 and ~39-37 ka cal BP for its layer, which also included an obsidian flake and immediately precedes the Levantine Aurignacian at the site. The obsidian artifacts from Ksar Akil are roughly contemporaneous obsidian from Yabroud Rockshelter II in Syria and Shanidar Cave in Iraq. Such instances of long-distance obsidian transport imply that connectivity might have risen ahead of the Levantine and Zagros Aurignacian. Unfortunately, due to the limited chronological resolution of older excavations at these sites, only at Ksar Akil can we have confidence that the layer containing obsidian artifacts immediately precedes the earliest Levantine Aurignacian sensu stricto layer. Given the apparent rarity of obsidian in the Levant, this region will benefit from endeavors to nondestructively source other toolstone materials as a means to create datasets similar to those recently used to model cultural areas of the European Aurignacian.

Origins of Epipalaeolithic obsidian artifacts from Garrod's excavations at Zarzi cave in the Zagros foothills of Iraq

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018

Ninety years ago in the Zagros foothills of Iraq, Dorothy Garrod and her team excavated Zarzi cav... more Ninety years ago in the Zagros foothills of Iraq, Dorothy Garrod and her team excavated Zarzi cave, the type site of the Epipalaeolithic "Zarzian" lithic industry. Garrod reported the existence of "two small fragments of obsidian" in the principally chert-based microlithic assemblage. One of the two artifacts from Zarzi was analyzed by Renfrew and colleagues in a pioneering application of obsidian sourcing to the Near East, which elucidated links between Neolithic villages. It was, unfortunately, ambiguously assigned to their "Group 4c" obsidian, which occurs at two different sources, ∼120 km apart, in eastern Turkey. New interpretive methodsagentbased models, least-cost path analysis, and othershave been applied to the datasets of Renfrew and colleagues, furthering work on the mechanisms of Neolithicization. With respect to the Epipalaeolithic, though, all of these studies rely entirely on this single Zarzi artifact with an inconclusive attribution. Fortunately, the second Zarzi obsidian "fragment"a burin spallwas "rediscovered" at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. Our study establishes that both artifacts came from Nemrut Dağ volcano, 400 km linearly and ≳650 km on foot. To do so, multivariate analyses were applied to the original spectroscopic data of Renfrew and colleagues, while state-of-the-art portable XRF was used to source the burin spall at Harvard's Peabody Museum. Comparison to two Epipalaeolithic sites in the Caucasus begins to reveal a patchwork of interaction spheres that highlight not only the potential of obsidian sourcing but also the considerable amount of work yet to be done.

Origin of an obsidian scraper at Yabroud Rockshelter II (Syria): Implications for Near Eastern social networks in the early Upper Palaeolithic

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017

Identifying the movement of lithic materials to reconstruct social networks has been a mainstay o... more Identifying the movement of lithic materials to reconstruct social networks has been a mainstay of research into Palaeolithic cognition and behavior, but such datasets are often predicated on studies of cherts and similar siliceous rocks, the origins of which can be difficult to establish conclusively. Yabroud Rockshelter II (YR2) in southern Syria contained stratified Middle and Upper Palaeolithic layers and, therefore, played a key role in defining the Levantine Palaeolithic. One obsidian scraper was found in Layer 4, which, via techno-typological correlations with nearby sites, dates to ∼41-32 ka. Here we report our attribution of this scraper, based on its elemental analysis, to the Komürcü outcrops at Göllü Dağ volcano in central Turkey, ≥700 km on foot. This finding has three important implications. First, the earliest transport of obsidian into the Levant is usually associated with the Epipalaeolithic Natufian cultural complex (∼14.5-11.5 ka); however, the phenomenon dates farther back to a period following the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Second, Layer 4 is roughly contemporaneous with Layer C at Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq, where two obsidian flakes were sourced to eastern Turkey and/or the Caucasus, suggesting similar scales of interaction across the landscape. Lastly, the chert assemblage is presumed to be local (≤10 km), but the obsidian scraper suggests that there are other fartravelled artifacts, underscoring that visual identification of cherts might be underestimating the extent of Late Pleistocene mobility and networks.

Reassessing obsidian field relationships at Glass Buttes, Oregon

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2015

The Glass Buttes complex in the High Lava Plains of Oregon produced obsidians during a series of ... more The Glass Buttes complex in the High Lava Plains of Oregon produced obsidians during a series of rhyolitic eruptions circa 5.8 to 6.5 Ma. These obsidians have been used to craft stone tools for millennia, from Clovis peoples to modern knappers, and have been recovered at sites throughout the Pacific Northwest. Glass Buttes is also the origin of much obsidian used for lithic replication experiments and to test new techniques for sourcing. Paradoxically, the spatial distributions of chemically distinct obsidians at this complex have received comparatively little attention. The only published study to connect obsidian compositional differences to the Glass Buttes landscape is Ambroz et al. ( ), who reported seven discrete, spatially constrained obsidian "chemical groups" based on clustered data in elemental scatterplots. Since its publication, their paper has been cited as an example of successful obsidian "subsource" characterization. During the course of a wider research program, we collected 337 specimens at Glass Buttes from loci originally sampled by . While we could replicate the "chemical groups" observed by Ambroz et al. ( ), we were unable to reproduce the reported spatial distribution of sources across the landscape. Almost half of the resampled loci exhibited intermingled populations of chemical types due to their locations on alluvial-colluvial deposits. We also identified five additional obsidian chemical types at the complex; however, geochemically significant elements suggest that only a subset of these eleven types correspond to different flows and domes at Glass Buttes. A few appear to reflect chemical zoning within flows, whereas two other types may be exogenous, moved from nearby obsidian sources via secondary transport. Thus, we demonstrate here that the discrete subsource zones demarcated by do not reflect reality on the landscape. This, in turn, alters how artifact sourcing results are interpreted with respect to how mobile foraging groups interacted with the landscape and made choices regarding resource acquisition, toolstone provisioning, and land use.

Magnetic sourcing of obsidian artifacts: successes and limitations

Water speciation in Anatolian Obsidian: Quenched magmatic Water vs low temperature hydration

From flow to quarry: magnetic properties of obsidian and changing the scale of archaeological sourcing

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013

ABSTRACT Previous studies have endeavored to use petrophysical traits of obsidian, particularly i... more ABSTRACT Previous studies have endeavored to use petrophysical traits of obsidian, particularly its magnetic properties, as an alternative to conventional geochemical sourcing, one of the greatest successes in archaeological science. Magnetic approaches, however, have not seen widespread application due to their mixed successes. In a time when geochemical analyses can be conducted non-destructively, in the field, and in a minute or two, magnetic measurements of obsidian must offer novel archaeological insights to be worthwhile, not merely act as a less successful version of geochemistry. To this end, we report the findings of our large-scale study of obsidian magnetism, which includes 734 geological obsidian specimens and 97 artifacts measured for six simple magnetic parameters. Based on our results, we propose, rather than using magnetic properties to source artifacts to a particular obsidian flow (inter-flow sourcing), these properties are best used to differentiate quarrying sites within an individual flow (intra-flow sourcing). Our results also demonstrate that certain magnetic properties are highly affected by ancient knappers&#39; material selection criteria. Furthermore, depending on the spatial scales of variation, which likely vary from flow to flow, we envision several potential applications of this approach, including integration into minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA). Magnetic data appear to shift the scale of obsidian sourcing from flows to quarries and, in turn, enable new insights into raw-material procurement strategies, group mobility, lithic technology, and the organization of space and production.

The technological versus methodological revolution of portable XRF in archaeology

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013

Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments have gained considerable attention within the arch... more Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments have gained considerable attention within the archaeological community. Few other recent instrumental developments have generated such debate. Much of this debate, which is dominated by scepticism over analytical performance, has occurred in informal settings. Rather than judge the use of pXRF based on unpublished work and conference banter, we conducted an extensive literature review of peer-reviewed research that used this technology. Our focus is developing an understanding of how, where, and why pXRF is being used in archaeology. What interests us most are research designs into which only pXRF could be integrated and the new research approaches these instruments may facilitate. Trends that emerged from the literature are surprising. For example, only 43% of the archaeological "pXRF" papers actually involve handheld instruments. In addition, more than four-fifths of handheld pXRF in archaeology is apparently conducted in laboratory contexts. Only 3% has been conducted in a fieldhouse or on-site laboratory, and 15% at an excavation, on a survey, or inside a historic structure. Here we argue that, while the technical capability to analyse archaeological materials using portable instruments may exist, it is not necessarily true the methodological and theoretical frameworks are in place to allow such activities to be archaeologically successful and significant. Because handheld pXRF is uniquely suited to in situ analysis, we expect the first changes in methodological and theoretical approaches will involve space, context, and related frameworks.

Scales of toolstone transport in the Armenian Highlands during MIS 3: The contribution of Ararat-1 Cave (Ararat Depression) to reconstructing opportunities for social interactions

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2025

Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, ranging from around 57,000 to 29,000 years ago, is a period of sign... more Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, ranging from around 57,000 to 29,000 years ago, is a period of significant archaeological interest due to notable transitions in lithic technology and hominin populations. In Europe, this time saw the replacement of Middle Palaeolithic (MP) technologies associated with Neanderthals by Upper Palaeolithic (UP) technologies linked to anatomically modern humans (AMHs). This technological shift is conventionally attributed to a demographic turnover; however, the timing of this transition varied regionally. The presence of Neanderthals and AMHs in the Levant, western Europe, and elsewhere over extended periods complicates the narrative, suggesting asynchronous and regionally diverse associations of hominin species and lithic technologies. This study shifts the attention to potential technological and cultural transmissions among MP-and UP-making groups, emphasizing the roles of social and exchange networks. Recent data from the obsidian-rich Armenian Highlands enable us to consider the mobility and land use of these groups without the added complication of toolstone with different knapping qualities, so patterns more clearly reflect mobility patterns, land use strategies, and potential social connections of foraging groups. These results suggest that, while MP-making groups in MIS 3 had overlapping territories, the UP-making groups at Aghitu-3 had smaller movements on the landscape. In contrast, MIS 2 sites with UP lithic assemblages have resource territories that apparently overlapped much like those of the MIS 3 MP sites. The findings hint at the possibility that differing mobility and land use during MIS 3 might have contributed to the coexistence of distinct lithic technologies, potentially through social transmission rather than a direct replacement of hominin populations.

Archaeological obsidian sourcing: Looking from the first 60 years to the next

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2025

Obsidian sourcing (or provenancing) is the process by which obsidian artifacts are matched to the... more Obsidian sourcing (or provenancing) is the process by which obsidian artifacts are matched to the geological sources from which the raw material originated. Given that obsidian is a substance that has been used from the emergence of our genus to the 21st century, reconstructing the movement of obsidian artifacts has great relevance to a wide variety of research questions. Matching obsidian artifacts to their origins has been called “one of the success stories of archaeological science” as well as “one of the most productive and successful research programs of archaeological science” (Williams-Thorpe, 1995). Furthermore, it has been labeled as “a microcosm of the development of archaeological science” (Henderson, 2001), reflecting wider trends within archaeology. Identifying an artifact’s source is only a proximate goal: the ultimate aim is to elucidate human behavior in the past. Since its inception during the 1960s, a variety of technological and methodological advances have been incorporated into obsidian sourcing research around the world. The focus here is not an overview of global obsidian sourcing articles. Instead, this paper is organized according to a set of familiar questions: What? When? Who? Where? How? Why? What next? The goal here is to address how obsidian sourcing has been, is now, and can be used to better understand our past, eventually moving from generating data to developing archaeological models and theories.

Increasing obsidian diversity during the Chalcolithic Period at Yeghegis-1 Rockshelter (Armenia) reveals shifts in land use and social networks

Scientific reports, Apr 25, 2024

The newly excavated rockshelter of Yeghegis-1 in Armenia reflects an occupation of five centuries... more The newly excavated rockshelter of Yeghegis-1 in Armenia reflects an occupation of five centuries, as attested by radiocarbon dates from ∼ 4100 to 4000 cal BCE in the lowest layer to ∼ 3600-3500 cal BCE at the top. It is a partially collapsed cave in which pastoralists, we hypothesize, wintered with their herds. The stone tool assemblage is predominantly obsidian (92.1%), despite the shelter being > 60 km on foot from the nearest sources. We use obsidian sourcing to investigate two purported trends in the Southern Caucasus during the Chalcolithic Period: (1) occupation of more varied high-altitude environments and (2) more expansive social networks. Our data show both trends were dynamic phenomena. There was a greater balance in use of the nearest pasturelands over time, perhaps linked to risk management and/or resource sustainability. During later occupations, artifacts from distant sources reveal more extensive connections. This increase in connectivity likely played a central role in the shifts in societal complexity that gave rise to widely shared material culture throughout the Armenian Highlands around the start of the Early Bronze Age. In such a model, greater social connectivity becomes a key mechanism for, rather than a product of, the spread of cultural and/or technological innovations. The Chalcolithic Period of the Southern Caucasus (5000-3500 BCE) corresponds to a phase of increased copper production alongside the continued use of lithic technology, chronologically situated between the agricultural settlements of the Neolithic Period and the far-reaching Kura-Araxes material culture "package" of the Early Bronze Age. Despite the relevance of this time period for understanding the development of social complexity across the Southern Caucasus, relatively little is known about these transformations during the Chalcolithic in this region. Sagona 1 notes that, in the 20th century, the Chalcolithic "was an elusive period, characterized by fuzzy concepts, multiple traditions, and an array of patchy evidence weakly glued together by a small number of radiocarbon readings" from Soviet-era excavations. Work of that time, as described by Lyonnet 2 , was "extremely abundant and fundamental but often imprecise" and lacked dates, hindering the potential to make chronological correlations among sites. In contrast, the 21st century has seen a shift toward scientific collaboration between national and international research centers (e.g., the collaborative work that we report here). Collaboration at the Chalcolithic site of Areni-1 Cave, for example, has led to detailed chronological 3 , geoarchaeological 4 , botanical 5 , and faunal 6 results. Recent excavations have yielded a wealth of new data, much of it at odds with

Yeghegis-1 rockshelter site: new investigations into the late Chalcolithic of Armenia

Antiquity, Feb 1, 2024

Excavations at Yeghegis-1, a rockshelter in southern Armenia, reveal long-term human habitation f... more Excavations at Yeghegis-1, a rockshelter in southern Armenia, reveal long-term human habitation from the late fifth to mid-fourth millennia BC. Here, the authors present a preliminary overview of the materials recovered from the site and highlight the potential of ongoing research to shed light on Chalcolithic human lifeways in the region.

Magnetic studies of archaeological obsidian: Variability of eruptive conditions within obsidian flows is key to high-resolution artifact sourcing (Invited)

AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2013

High-resolution Chemostratigraphy Through a Nearshore, Mixed Carbonate-shale Succession of Late Ordovician Age (Sandbian-Katian) in the Laurentian Cratonic Interior

2015 AGU Fall Meeting, Dec 15, 2015

Identifying the origins of obsidian artifacts in the Deh Luran Plain (Southwestern Iran) highlights community connections in the Neolithic Zagros

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Oct 17, 2022

Exchange networks created by Neolithic pastoral transhumance have been central to explaining the ... more Exchange networks created by Neolithic pastoral transhumance have been central to explaining the distant transport of obsidian since chemical analysis was first used to attribute Near Eastern artifacts to their volcanic origins in the 1960s. Since then, critical reassessments of floral, faunal, and chronological data have upended long-held interpretations regarding the emergence of food production and have demonstrated that far-traveled, nomadic pastoralists were more myth than reality, at least during the Neolithic. Despite debates regarding their proposed conveyance mechanisms, obsidian artifacts’ transport has received relatively little attention compared with zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical lines of investigation. The rise of nondestructive and portable instruments permits entire obsidian assemblages to be traced to their sources, renewing their significance in elucidating connections among early pastoral and agricultural communities. Here we share our findings about the obsidian artifacts excavated from the sites of Ali Kosh and Chagha Sefid in the southern Zagros. In the 1960s and 1970s, 28 obsidian artifacts from the sites were destructively tested, and the remainder were sorted by color. Our results emphasize a dynamic, accelerating connectivity among the Early and Late Neolithic communities. Here we propose and support an alternative model for obsidian distribution among more settled communities. In brief, diversity in the obsidian assemblage accelerated diachronically, an invisible trend in the earlier studies. Our model of increasing population densities is supported by archaeological data and computational simulations, offering insights regarding the Neolithic Demographic Transition in the Zagros, an equivalent of which is commonly thought to have occurred around the world.

Obsidian exchange networks and highland-lowland interaction in the Lesser Caucasus borderlands

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in the Near East, but relatively few have focused o... more Obsidian sourcing studies have a long history in the Near East, but relatively few have focused on obsidian exchange after the Early Bronze Age. Here, we present a multi-technique analysis of an assemblage of 111 obsidian artifacts from excavated Late Bronze and Early Iron Age (LBA-EIA; c. 15th-6th c BCE) contexts at Mtsvane Gora, southern Georgia. Because the site is situated in the lowland Kura Valley and the nearest obsidian sources are in the highlands to the south and west, obsidian provenance can serve as a proxy for mapping highland-lowland interactions. Chemical compositions analyzed via portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), electron microprobe analysis (EMPA), and laser ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS), were compared with existing geological datasets of chemical analyses to identify the source of all but one of the artifacts analyzed. The results show that Chikiani, a source in the highlands of southern Georgia, was the geological origin of &gt;90% of the objects analyzed. While acknowledging that obsidian exchange is just one aspect of highland-lowland interaction, this finding implies that Mtsvane Gora&#39;s connections with the adjacent highlands were skewed towards greater engagement with some highland areas relative to others. More generally, the research suggests that geographic adjacency of highlands and lowlands does not necessarily mean that they were highly interconnected.

Introducing Barozh 12: a Middle Palaeolithic open-air site on the Edge of the Ararat Depression, Armenia

Using Image Analysis Software to Correlate Sherd Scans in the Field and X-Ray Element Maps in the Laboratory

This article is substantially based on the editorial published in volume 50(2) of Archaeometry, a... more

End of the line? Obsidian at Umm Qseir, a Halafian farmstead in the Syrian steppe

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2021

Abstract Obsidian sourcing in the Near East was principally developed to investigate the Neolithi... more Abstract Obsidian sourcing in the Near East was principally developed to investigate the Neolithic Revolution, but limitations of these early studies were soon recognized. Critics noted that sites included in the models span millennia and vary in size and function. Greater insight is offered by a more contextualized examination of the nature and timing of sites. Within the Neolithic sequence, one phase of considerable interest is the Halaf period (c. 6000–4500 BCE) in Northern Mesopotamia. The spread of Halaf “tradition,” arguably the earliest example of a widely shared material culture in the region, has been tied to varied hypotheses of movement (of people, objects, and/or ideas) that remain largely untested. The use of obsidian sourcing to investigate Halafian phenomena (e.g., the spread of Halaf ceramics, the practice of dryland farming) would ideally involve high temporal resolution and consider settlement function and scale (e.g., an early urban center, a small farming village). Umm Qseir, the smallest known Halaf site, fulfills both. Occupied for less than two centuries, Umm Qseir was an environmentally marginal farmstead managed year-round by just two or three families at a time. The closest contemporary settlement was more than 30 km to the north, within the conventional limits of dryland farming (annual rainfall > 250 mm). Here we reconstruct and refine obsidian sourcing data for Umm Qseir artifacts from 1990s and 2000s studies, and we present new data for a small assemblage. We also highlight techno-typological clues that elucidate production, use, and maintenance of such artifacts. Ultimately, such findings offer insights into the exchange strategy of Syrian steppe farmsteaders and reflect an important means of risk management.

Later Stone Age toolstone acquisition in the Central Rift Valley of Kenya: Portable XRF of Eburran obsidian artifacts from Leakey's excavations at Gamble's Cave II

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018

The complexities of Later Stone Age environmental and behavioral variability in East Africa remai... more The complexities of Later Stone Age environmental and behavioral variability in East Africa remain poorly defined, and toolstone sourcing is essential to understand the scale of the social and natural landscapes encountered by earlier human populations. The Naivasha-Nakuru Basin in Kenya's Rift Valley is a region that is not only highly sensitive to climatic changes but also one of the world's most obsidian-rich landscapes. We used portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyses of obsidian artifacts and geological specimens to understand patterns of toolstone acquisition and consumption reflected in the early/middle Holocene strata (Phases 3-4 of the Eburran industry) at Gamble's Cave II. Our analyses represent the first geochemical source identifications of obsidian artifacts from the Eburran industry and indicate the persistent selection over time for high-quality obsidian from Mt. Eburru, ~20 km distant, despite changes in site occupation intensity that apparently correlate with changes in the local environment. This result may indicate resilience of Eburran foraging strategies during environmental shifts and, potentially, a cultural preference for a specific lithic material that overcame its accessibility changes. Testing such hypotheses requires a more extensive program of obsidian artifact sourcing. Our findings demonstrate the great potential for sourcing studies in the Rift Valley as well as underscore the amount of work that remains to be done.

Origin of an Early Upper Palaeolithic obsidian burin at Ksar Akil (Lebanon): Evidence of increased connectivity ahead of the Levantine Aurignacian?

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2019

Given the importance of the Levant in understanding the origins and dispersals of modern humans, ... more Given the importance of the Levant in understanding the origins and dispersals of modern humans, there has been great interest in archaeological evidence to support population movements between the Levant and adjacent regions. The link, if any, between the Aurignacian tradition across Europe and the "Levantine Aurignacian" is a particular focus. Ksar Akil in Lebanon not only is one of the most deeply stratified Levantine sites but also has the longest record of Upper Paleolithic behaviors, so it is a benchmark to which developments in the Levant are often compared. Schmidt and Zimmermann ( ) recently proposed that the European Aurignacian tradition might best be understood in terms of connectivity, as evidenced by long-distance lithic transfers that can act as a proxy for mobility and social networks. Here we document a previously unreported obsidian burin from Ksar Akil. Portable X-ray fluorescence reveals that it matches a source ≥700 km away on foot in central Turkey. Two recent dating programs have calculated ages of ~41-38 and ~39-37 ka cal BP for its layer, which also included an obsidian flake and immediately precedes the Levantine Aurignacian at the site. The obsidian artifacts from Ksar Akil are roughly contemporaneous obsidian from Yabroud Rockshelter II in Syria and Shanidar Cave in Iraq. Such instances of long-distance obsidian transport imply that connectivity might have risen ahead of the Levantine and Zagros Aurignacian. Unfortunately, due to the limited chronological resolution of older excavations at these sites, only at Ksar Akil can we have confidence that the layer containing obsidian artifacts immediately precedes the earliest Levantine Aurignacian sensu stricto layer. Given the apparent rarity of obsidian in the Levant, this region will benefit from endeavors to nondestructively source other toolstone materials as a means to create datasets similar to those recently used to model cultural areas of the European Aurignacian.

Origins of Epipalaeolithic obsidian artifacts from Garrod's excavations at Zarzi cave in the Zagros foothills of Iraq

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2018

Ninety years ago in the Zagros foothills of Iraq, Dorothy Garrod and her team excavated Zarzi cav... more Ninety years ago in the Zagros foothills of Iraq, Dorothy Garrod and her team excavated Zarzi cave, the type site of the Epipalaeolithic "Zarzian" lithic industry. Garrod reported the existence of "two small fragments of obsidian" in the principally chert-based microlithic assemblage. One of the two artifacts from Zarzi was analyzed by Renfrew and colleagues in a pioneering application of obsidian sourcing to the Near East, which elucidated links between Neolithic villages. It was, unfortunately, ambiguously assigned to their "Group 4c" obsidian, which occurs at two different sources, ∼120 km apart, in eastern Turkey. New interpretive methodsagentbased models, least-cost path analysis, and othershave been applied to the datasets of Renfrew and colleagues, furthering work on the mechanisms of Neolithicization. With respect to the Epipalaeolithic, though, all of these studies rely entirely on this single Zarzi artifact with an inconclusive attribution. Fortunately, the second Zarzi obsidian "fragment"a burin spallwas "rediscovered" at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. Our study establishes that both artifacts came from Nemrut Dağ volcano, 400 km linearly and ≳650 km on foot. To do so, multivariate analyses were applied to the original spectroscopic data of Renfrew and colleagues, while state-of-the-art portable XRF was used to source the burin spall at Harvard's Peabody Museum. Comparison to two Epipalaeolithic sites in the Caucasus begins to reveal a patchwork of interaction spheres that highlight not only the potential of obsidian sourcing but also the considerable amount of work yet to be done.

Origin of an obsidian scraper at Yabroud Rockshelter II (Syria): Implications for Near Eastern social networks in the early Upper Palaeolithic

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2017

Identifying the movement of lithic materials to reconstruct social networks has been a mainstay o... more Identifying the movement of lithic materials to reconstruct social networks has been a mainstay of research into Palaeolithic cognition and behavior, but such datasets are often predicated on studies of cherts and similar siliceous rocks, the origins of which can be difficult to establish conclusively. Yabroud Rockshelter II (YR2) in southern Syria contained stratified Middle and Upper Palaeolithic layers and, therefore, played a key role in defining the Levantine Palaeolithic. One obsidian scraper was found in Layer 4, which, via techno-typological correlations with nearby sites, dates to ∼41-32 ka. Here we report our attribution of this scraper, based on its elemental analysis, to the Komürcü outcrops at Göllü Dağ volcano in central Turkey, ≥700 km on foot. This finding has three important implications. First, the earliest transport of obsidian into the Levant is usually associated with the Epipalaeolithic Natufian cultural complex (∼14.5-11.5 ka); however, the phenomenon dates farther back to a period following the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Second, Layer 4 is roughly contemporaneous with Layer C at Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq, where two obsidian flakes were sourced to eastern Turkey and/or the Caucasus, suggesting similar scales of interaction across the landscape. Lastly, the chert assemblage is presumed to be local (≤10 km), but the obsidian scraper suggests that there are other fartravelled artifacts, underscoring that visual identification of cherts might be underestimating the extent of Late Pleistocene mobility and networks.

Reassessing obsidian field relationships at Glass Buttes, Oregon

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2015

The Glass Buttes complex in the High Lava Plains of Oregon produced obsidians during a series of ... more The Glass Buttes complex in the High Lava Plains of Oregon produced obsidians during a series of rhyolitic eruptions circa 5.8 to 6.5 Ma. These obsidians have been used to craft stone tools for millennia, from Clovis peoples to modern knappers, and have been recovered at sites throughout the Pacific Northwest. Glass Buttes is also the origin of much obsidian used for lithic replication experiments and to test new techniques for sourcing. Paradoxically, the spatial distributions of chemically distinct obsidians at this complex have received comparatively little attention. The only published study to connect obsidian compositional differences to the Glass Buttes landscape is Ambroz et al. ( ), who reported seven discrete, spatially constrained obsidian "chemical groups" based on clustered data in elemental scatterplots. Since its publication, their paper has been cited as an example of successful obsidian "subsource" characterization. During the course of a wider research program, we collected 337 specimens at Glass Buttes from loci originally sampled by . While we could replicate the "chemical groups" observed by Ambroz et al. ( ), we were unable to reproduce the reported spatial distribution of sources across the landscape. Almost half of the resampled loci exhibited intermingled populations of chemical types due to their locations on alluvial-colluvial deposits. We also identified five additional obsidian chemical types at the complex; however, geochemically significant elements suggest that only a subset of these eleven types correspond to different flows and domes at Glass Buttes. A few appear to reflect chemical zoning within flows, whereas two other types may be exogenous, moved from nearby obsidian sources via secondary transport. Thus, we demonstrate here that the discrete subsource zones demarcated by do not reflect reality on the landscape. This, in turn, alters how artifact sourcing results are interpreted with respect to how mobile foraging groups interacted with the landscape and made choices regarding resource acquisition, toolstone provisioning, and land use.

Magnetic sourcing of obsidian artifacts: successes and limitations

Water speciation in Anatolian Obsidian: Quenched magmatic Water vs low temperature hydration

From flow to quarry: magnetic properties of obsidian and changing the scale of archaeological sourcing

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013

ABSTRACT Previous studies have endeavored to use petrophysical traits of obsidian, particularly i... more ABSTRACT Previous studies have endeavored to use petrophysical traits of obsidian, particularly its magnetic properties, as an alternative to conventional geochemical sourcing, one of the greatest successes in archaeological science. Magnetic approaches, however, have not seen widespread application due to their mixed successes. In a time when geochemical analyses can be conducted non-destructively, in the field, and in a minute or two, magnetic measurements of obsidian must offer novel archaeological insights to be worthwhile, not merely act as a less successful version of geochemistry. To this end, we report the findings of our large-scale study of obsidian magnetism, which includes 734 geological obsidian specimens and 97 artifacts measured for six simple magnetic parameters. Based on our results, we propose, rather than using magnetic properties to source artifacts to a particular obsidian flow (inter-flow sourcing), these properties are best used to differentiate quarrying sites within an individual flow (intra-flow sourcing). Our results also demonstrate that certain magnetic properties are highly affected by ancient knappers&#39; material selection criteria. Furthermore, depending on the spatial scales of variation, which likely vary from flow to flow, we envision several potential applications of this approach, including integration into minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA). Magnetic data appear to shift the scale of obsidian sourcing from flows to quarries and, in turn, enable new insights into raw-material procurement strategies, group mobility, lithic technology, and the organization of space and production.

The technological versus methodological revolution of portable XRF in archaeology

Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013

Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments have gained considerable attention within the arch... more Portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) instruments have gained considerable attention within the archaeological community. Few other recent instrumental developments have generated such debate. Much of this debate, which is dominated by scepticism over analytical performance, has occurred in informal settings. Rather than judge the use of pXRF based on unpublished work and conference banter, we conducted an extensive literature review of peer-reviewed research that used this technology. Our focus is developing an understanding of how, where, and why pXRF is being used in archaeology. What interests us most are research designs into which only pXRF could be integrated and the new research approaches these instruments may facilitate. Trends that emerged from the literature are surprising. For example, only 43% of the archaeological "pXRF" papers actually involve handheld instruments. In addition, more than four-fifths of handheld pXRF in archaeology is apparently conducted in laboratory contexts. Only 3% has been conducted in a fieldhouse or on-site laboratory, and 15% at an excavation, on a survey, or inside a historic structure. Here we argue that, while the technical capability to analyse archaeological materials using portable instruments may exist, it is not necessarily true the methodological and theoretical frameworks are in place to allow such activities to be archaeologically successful and significant. Because handheld pXRF is uniquely suited to in situ analysis, we expect the first changes in methodological and theoretical approaches will involve space, context, and related frameworks.

Seen Through a Glass Darkly: Reexamining Connections Between Mesopotamia and the Caucasus

Between Syria and the Highlands: Studies in Honor of Giorgio Buccellati and Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, 2019

It has long been debated whether the Hurrians, who inhabited the zone between the Anatolian highl... more It has long been debated whether the Hurrians, who inhabited the zone between the Anatolian highlands and Mesopotamian lowlands, were immigrants from the northeast or indigenous to the region. I consider the implications of new obsidian studies on the issue of social networks that linked Mesopotamian settlements to the Caucasus.

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM): Applications in Archaeology

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM; this acronym is used for both the instrument itself and the te... more Scanning electron microscopy (SEM; this acronym is used for both the instrument itself and the technique) has been broadly used in archaeology for over four decades. The SEM is capable of two basic functions: imaging and providing compositional information. Consequently, it has been utilized for nearly every archaeological application in which one wishes to examine magnified images of a specimen and/or determine its composition on a microscopic scale, everything from determining the raw-material sources of stone tools to examining the five-millennia-old skin of Ötzi the Iceman.

Keeping Up with the Excavations: Rapid Obsidian Sourcing in the Field with Portable XRF

The NARNIA Project: Integrating Approaches to Ancient Material Studies, 2014

Work Package 7 of NARNIA, Portable XRF Applications in Archaeology, had an objective of contrast... more Work Package 7 of NARNIA, Portable XRF Applications in Archaeology, had an objective of contrasting applications in the field with those in laboratory/museum settings and establishing effective means of field-based analyses. Portable XRF (pXRF) is a means to bring traditionally lab-based studies into the field, and it allows archaeologists to collaborate on-site with colleagues who might otherwise conduct their research off-site. This technology permits us to analyze many more artifacts or samples faster and non-destructively, and those chosen for study can be affected less by export limitations and more by the intellectual framework within which the research was conceived. Ultimately, pXRF enables new (or previously cost- and/or time-prohibitive) research designs. Tasked with teaching and research involving a broad range of archaeological materials, the broad remit of Work Package 7 can be summarized as “work where we couldn’t work before, answer what we couldn’t answer before.” In other words, a core objective was to shift chemical analyses from the realm of “white lab coats” in controlled environments to “muddy boots” in the field. A particular goal was to source obsidian artifacts as they are unearthed at archaeological sites, enabling new research frameworks and informing excavation strategies and interpretations in the field. The setting for this research was Armenia, one of the most obsidian-rich natural and cultural landscapes in the world. I developed two methods to source artifacts on-site in only 10 seconds, including automatic source identification calculated in realtime.

Chapter 8: What Constitutes an Obsidian “Source”?: Landscape and Geochemical Considerations and their Archaeological Implications

In his chapter titled “Tracing to Source” in Science and the Past, Hughes (1991) draws an analogy... more In his chapter titled “Tracing to Source” in Science and the Past, Hughes (1991) draws an analogy between the chemical analyses of artifacts for sourcing and the classification of objects based on visual characteristics. He argues that a particular “object’s appearance is the first way we recognise where it comes from: a Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ is an instantly recognisable shape even if the VW badge has fallen off the car; likewise we recognise a Rolls Royce” (99). The analogy is not carried through, though, to an underlying issue in sourcing research: what is the definition of a “source”? The “sources” of Volkswagen and Rolls Royce automobiles are complex. Should the Beetle’s source be considered the Volkswagen Corporation, or would a specific factory be the source? Volkswagen is a German company; however, Beetles were also manufactured in Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, Australia, and Mexico. To clutter the issue further, Rolls Royce Motors was sold to Volkswagen in 1998. Depending on the definition, a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle and a 2010 Rolls Royce sedan may have identical “sources.” Hughes’ analogy inadvertently accentuates the importance of a clear conceptualization of “source.”

Chapter 19: Fifty Years of Obsidian Sourcing in the Near East: Considering the Archaeological Zeitgeist and Legacies of Renfrew, Dixon, and Cann

Two illustrations from the 1968 Scientific American article by John Dixon, Joseph Cann, and Coli... more Two illustrations from the 1968 Scientific American article by John Dixon, Joseph Cann, and Colin Renfrew are, without doubt, the most frequently reproduced figures in all of obsidian sourcing. Their map generalising the spatial distribution of obsidians across the Neolithic Near East and their graph of the “fall-off curves” for obsidian abundance in the corresponding flaked-stone assemblages are, amongst many other venues, included in Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn’s textbook Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice. The book, now in its sixth edition, has been used by more than 200,000 archaeology students since 1991. Like most of those students, my first exposure to obsidian sourcing was that part of the “Trade and Exchange” chapter (soon followed by Kent Flannery’s The Early Mesoamerican Village). The figures, which represented the research of Renfrew, Cann, and Dixon (hereafter RDC for simplicity) so succinctly, had core roles in popularising obsidian sourcing. Approaching 50 years old, their work still represents the largest single regional-scale obsidian-sourcing study in the Near East. Today, however, obsidian sourcing in Near East archaeology lags behind that in the New World (where the largest regional-scale study included over 9000 obsidian artefacts from over 130 Pacific Northwest sites; Skinner 1995). What was the archaeological backdrop that led RDC to start their obsidian work in 1962? What led a lull in Near Eastern obsidian sourcing during the 1980s and 1990s until a recent “new wave”? What can the past and present of obsidian sourcing tell us about its future?

Raw-Material Sources of Kenan Tepe Obsidian Artefacts

Scanning Electron Microscopy in Geoarchaeology

Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology

$Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Figure 1 Simplified cross-section of a typical scanning electron microscope (SEM) and electron microprobe analyzer (EMPA). A beam of energetic electrons is produced by the electron gun and focused by an optical system (composed of a series of lenses and apertures) onto a specimen. The primary detectors are shown: a secondary- electron (SE) detector, a backscattered-electron (BSE) detector, and an energy-dispersive spectrometer (EDS) for X-rays. Additionally, EMPAs measure X-rays using a number (typically five) of wavelength-dispersive spectrometers (WDS). Not shown are detectors that only certain instruments have (e.g., electron backscatter diffraction or EBSD) (Image by the author).$

Scanning Electron Microscopy

Archaeology of Food: An Encyclopedia

First hands-on tests of an Olympus Vanta portable XRF analyzer to source Armenian obsidian artifacts

International Association for Obsidian Studies Bulletin, 2017

A few of the major portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) manufacturers have released new models in t... more A few of the major portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) manufacturers have released new models in the past year or two. The technologies in these latest instruments have advanced so much that any performance appraisals more than a few years old are essentially obsolete. The X-ray detectors and associated electronics inside a new pXRF analyzer are more sensitive than those in many benchtop models just five or ten years ago. This report summarizes initial tests of the newest pXRF series – Vanta – from Olympus Scientific Solutions. The tests included sourcing 40 artifacts from two Early Bronze Age settlements in Armenia and analyzing a collection of geological specimens that had been measured using other techniques, including neutron activation analysis and energy- dispersive XRF at the University of Missouri Research Reactor as well as electron probe X-ray microanalysis at the University of Minnesota. This report is intended as documentation of the Vanta’s high potential for non-destructive obsidian artifact sourcing that is fast, precise, and accurate.

Gegham Style: Applying Obsidian Magnetic Studies in Central Armenia

Obsidian Sourcing, Dating, and Technology in the New World: Readings from American Antiquity and Latin American Antiquity (1962-2012)

Climate Change, Globalization, and Other Modern Issues in Ancient Syria

Syrian Studies Association Newsletter, Jan 1, 2011

Societal responses to climate change in marginally productive areas. Social networks and new mode... more Societal responses to climate change in marginally productive areas. Social networks and new modes of communication. Maintenance of identity and cultural practices among immigrants and ethnic minorities. Sustainability under population and resource pressures. Colonial empires with geopolitical interests in controlling natural resources. State formation in ethnically diverse regions. Domestic production versus foreign trade in an increasingly connected world. Farmers and herders becoming city dwellers under economic pressures. Flow of people, goods, and ideas and the effects on local cultures during globalizing movements. This could be a list of topics in an upcoming Syrian studies conference or a seminar course on modern Middle East issues. They are also subjects of great interest to archaeologists who study Chalcolithic (4500-3500 BCE) and Bronze-Age (3500-1200 BCE) Syria. These issues are not as inextricably linked to modernity as they first seem, and archaeology offers a way to explore them with time depth.

Using Image Analysis Software to Correlate Sherd Scans in the Field and X-ray Element Maps in the Laboratory

Our research involves a novel combination of techniques to investigate the ceramic tradition at a... more Our research involves a novel combination of techniques to investigate the ceramic tradition at ancient Urkesh. Preparing and observing large numbers of samples for traditional ceramic petrography is expensive, time-consuming, and impractical in the field. Our alternative approach uses a flatbed scanner on- site to collect high-resolution images of sectioned sherds. We selected a portion of the scanned sherds for subsequent microanalysis. Element maps of these sherds were made using an electron microprobe (also called an electron probe microanalyzer). Image analysis software correlated the two image sets. The result is a promising way to analyze large numbers of sherds, crucial for understanding chronological and stylistic variations at this particular site and throughout the region.

An evaluation of portable X-ray fluorescence for artifact sourcing in the field: can a handheld device differentiate Anatolian obsidian sources?

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 2007

Ideally chemical analyses used for sourcing studies could be conducted in the field, quickly, and... more Ideally chemical analyses used for sourcing studies could be conducted in the field, quickly, and nondestructively. Unfortunately, most techniques require immobile instruments. One technique with great potential for on-site analysis is portable energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (ED-XRF). Thermo Fisher Scientific's NITON analyzer is a handheld ED-XRF device about the size and shape of a cordless drill. It is typically used for environmental monitoring and scrap-metal testing. I evaluated an "off-the-shelf" model of NITON analyzer to see if it could differentiate Anatolian obsidian sources. The analyzer was used in a factory-set "bulk/soil" mode without further calibration, and the 21 elements measured were also preset. NIST standards were also analyzed to determine if its accuracy and precision for trace elements are sufficient for sourcing. Like all ED-XRF systems, this analyzer is susceptible to X-ray peak overlaps, causing misidentified elements and spurious element detection. A sample-size effect was also observed for some elements, as has been previously documented for XRF. Element concentrations were often under- or over-reported, typically by a factor of 2 to 3, although more at times. This strongly underscores the need for users to create custom calibrations for each material (e.g., obsidian based on rhyolitic glass standards) to improve accuracy. Testing established, though, that errors were mostly systematic. About two-thirds of the obsidian sources were clearly distinguished. Other source fingerprints overlapped, and some overlaps had important implications for archaeological interpretation. Also, if the data are only internally consistent, one cannot use them directly with existing source databases. Any archaeological applications of the analyzer must play to its strengths, notably portability. This instrument might be most useful in archaeology as a "first sort" tool: one can analyze hundreds of artifacts on-site, explore the data for chemical clusters, select representative samples from each cluster for export and later lab-based analyses, and supply the initial data in artifact export requests. Portable ED-XRF is one of only a handful of techniques that shows potential for initial on-site chemical sorting of artifacts, and I am planning further tests using my own custom calibrations.

Reviews of The Field Description of Igneous Rocks (Dougal Jerram and Nick Petford, 2011), Sedimentary Rocks in the Field: A Practical Guide (Maurice E. Tucker, 2011), and Field Geophysics (John Milsom and Asger Eriksen, 2011)

Field guides are essential components of both the archaeologist’s and geologist’s toolkits but mu... more Field guides are essential components of both the archaeologist’s and geologist’s toolkits but must also be worth their weight in a pack. This trio of books, all revised from prior editions, has been updated for Wiley-Blackwell’s Geological Field Guide Series, and their subjects are relevant to a sizable proportion of geoarchaeological research: sedimentary and igneous rocks as well as geophysical surveying. The books are touted as pocket-sized guides for use in the field, and indeed they are perfectly sized to fit in the cargo pocket of field pants (one at a time, not all three at once). The potential for useful field guides on the three topics is exciting, and these books are certainly poised to fill notable voids.

Barozh 12: A New Middle Palaeolithic Open-Air Site on the Edge of the Ararat Depression, Armenia

by Phil Glauberman, Ellery Frahm, Yannick Raczynski-Henk, and Boris Gasparyan

References

The Bronze-Age Obsidian Industry at Tell Mozan (Ancient Urkesh), Syria

Obsidian tools continued to be utilized in Northern Mesopotamia well beyond the introduction of m... more Obsidian tools continued to be utilized in Northern Mesopotamia well beyond the introduction of metal but have received little archaeological attention. It is w idely held that obsidian sourcing can offer little new information during a peri od in which there is a variety of artifacts and texts available to study. Obsidi an, though, is unparalleled in its widespread use and ability to be sourced, so it provides unique information about contact, exchange, and migration. Its sourc ing can complement other types of information and be used to test existing hypot heses. Before the recent excavations at Tell Mozan (ancient Urkesh) in northeast ern Syria, most of the information about its inhabitants, the Hurrians, was infe rred from linguistic or textual evidence. Identifying the sources of their obsid ian artifacts can be useful for testing some of the highly debated inferences. The research at hand involved three primary goals. I sought, .rst, to demonstrat e a sophisticated approach to obsidian studies in the Near East and, second, to redevelop an analytical technique --electron microprobe analysis --for sourcin g obsidian. Therefore, I assembled and analyzed a reference collection of over 9 00 geological obsidian specimens from dozens of sources in Turkey as well as Arm enia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. I sourced a large number of artifacts (n = 97) so that I could explore spatial and temporal patterns on a site level. In addition, this analytical technique, if applied critically, can (i) control for obsidian as a mixture, (ii) measure artifacts non-destructively, and (iii) disce rn two chemically similar obsidian sources: Nemrut Da! and Bingöl A. Thus, based o n my results, I not only differentiate these obsidians but also pinpoint the col lection loci, down to a kilometer, of the Nemrut Da! obsidians found at Tell Moz an. My third goal involved identifying the sources of obsidian represented among the Bronze-Age artifacts at Tell Mozan. These results were, in turn, used to explor e temporal and spatial patterns of the obsidian sources used at the site, consid er broader implications for obsidian use in Bronze-Age Mesopotamia, and examine two issues regarding Urkesh and its Hurrian inhabitants. The overall similaritie s for two site areas suggest that people living in various parts of Urkesh had s imilar access to the same obsidian sources. On the other hand, all the sourced o bsidian from the temple came from one .ow at Nemrut Da!, and a service courtyard of the palace contains the only Cappadocian obsidian. In fact, the greatest var iety of sources is found in units containing palace courtyards. Regarding the broader implications, there is evidence at Tell Mozan of productio n of prismatic obsidian blades and bladelets (e.g, .akes with cortex, cores, and early-series blades), suggesting they were not imported from a production cente r. In addition, there is a prevailing assumption that, if Bingöl B obsidian is fou nd at a site, one can presume that all of the peralkaline obsidian artifacts cam e from Bingöl A, not Nemrut Da!. My results reveal that this assumption, based on maximal ef.ciency, is specious.