Dual Ceramic Testing: Using Decorative Ceramic Analysis and Neutron Activation Analysis

“A new perspective on Late Holocene social interaction in Northwest Alaska:
results of a preliminary ceramic sourcing study” is an article by Shelby L. Anderson, Matthew T. Boulanger, Michael D. Glascock (2010) about the possibility of seeing territoriality through the ceramics of the Coastal Peoples of the Bering Straight. They used a Neutron Activation Analysis(NAA) to determine the clay chemical composition of the ceramic sherds found at four sites along the Kobuk River and four coastal sites. Their hypothesis was that there would be several macro-groups and the distribution of these amongst the sites would show a trade network or instances of territoriality.

Their findings were that there were three macro-groups of clay composition and three sub-groups of one macro-group. What this means is that there were at least three different sources of clay and that at least one group was mixing their types of clay together to get a certain type of clay mix. These NAA results along with a typological analysis of the decorative aspects of the neck rims of the ceramics lead Anderson et al. to determine that there was some territoriality going on, as indicated by the decoration typology, and a very strong indication of clay resource trade, as indicated by the NAA results.

This is a well done test and a really useful way to use the NAA to its full potential. It feels like it is a very thorough test because of the amount of sites they gathered data from and because of the decorative typological test that went along with it. Often articles currently either use one or the other to analyze ceramics, but the merging of the two in this article seems to just help not hinder it. The question that of course comes up is did doing a dual analysis drain funding, and is this why most research groups do not decide to do a dual test in the same research group? While the data and conclusion is understandable, I felt that the method was an even more important piece to this article.

Anderson, S.L., M.T. Boulanger, and M.D. Glascock
2011. "A new perspective on Late Holocene social interaction in Northwest Alaska: results of a preliminary ceramic sourcing study". Journal of Archaeological Science. 38 (5): 943-955.