The New Netherland/New York Ceramic Chemistry Archive: Compositional Analysis of Bricks by ICP
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THE NEW NETHERLAND/NEW YORK CERAMIC CHEMISTRY ARCHIVE: COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS OF BRICKS BY ICP ALLAN S.
GILBERT* and GARMAN HARBOTTLE**
*Allan S. Gilbert, Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458 **Garman Harbottle, Dept. of Chemistry, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY 11973 1.
Introduction
Historical archaeologists investigating early American production and trade must work with the written record as well as the evidence from controlled excavation. Both kinds of data have their place in the inquiry, yet the details they furnish are not necessarily congruent or applicable to the solution of all historical questions. To illustrate, artifacts were not always manufactured in the places where they are found, but in order to resolve this uncertainty accurately and directly, the origins of excavated materials must often be determined by means that are independent of historic documentation. If sources can be shown to be distant, then despite any similarity to items of known local manufacture or written evidence suggesting otherwise, long-range exchange structures must have been present. The interpretation of archaeological and historical data can then be guided by more informed judgment. The first European colonists on the mid-Atlantic coast of North America were Dutch. Through the vast Dutch commercial network, which reached its peak in the early 17th century,[l] diverse goods entered the New Netherland from its inception in 1624. English takeover in 1664 shifted trade connections into New York colony toward the British sphere of influence.(2] Throughout the periods of Dutch and English control, the varied pattern of imports was superimposed over the steady growth of local industry. Among early manufactured goods, ceramics have posed some of the most serious sourcing difficulties. Though records confirm the existence of potters, tile-, and brickmakers,[3] excavated examples do not often reveal features that are reliably diagnostic of their place of origin,[4] leaving the nature of their production and commercial distribution unknown. Provenience studies that use multielemental analytic chemistry to characterize natural materials and the artifacts made from them are growing in the archaeological literature. The general procedure involves the determination of concentrations for many elements, thereby creating a characteristic chemical profile, or "fingerprint," for the sample. Sample profiles are then compared, and similarity is judged according to various multivariate statistical analyses in order to show which samples cluster close enough to be considered of common origin. Such procedures have been used for sourcing archaeological obsidian, semi-precious stones like turquoise and jade, sculptural limestone, and most importantly, ceramics. The multivariate statistics are summarized below in section 3, and a cost/benefit consideration of the chemical determinations follows in section 4. Long-range planning in such research has led over the past decades to the accumulation of chemic
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