Friday, March 23, 2007

Society for California Archaeology Meetings - 2007

I am pleased to report that a number of students from the CSULB archaeology program are presenting papers at this year's Society for California Archaeology meetings in San Jose. The presence of students who present papers and posters at meetings is an excellent assessment measure of success of a program. I think we do remarkably well in this area. This year's SCA meeting participants are: Kristin Safi Luminescence Dating of Ceramic Samples from the Southern California Desert (Symposium: Current Applications of Advanced Technology in California Archaeology
  • Luminescence dating can provide chronometric information about archaeological materials in regions where few cultural remains are readily available for the determination of temporal provenience. The desert region of southern California is one particular area where luminescence dating has great potential for providing chronometric information for aggregate scale archaeological features. In this study, coarse grain and fine grain analysis is conducted utilizing Optically Stimulated Luminescence/Single Aliquot Regeneration (OSL/SAR) dating techniques to determine the direct age dates on five ceramic sherds from two survey areas in Indio, California. Compositional analyses are also conducted to assess and calibrate the chronometric data to achieve greatinformation useful in provenance determination.
Clarus Backes Characterization of Rock Chemical Art Pigments by LA-ICP-MS (Symposium: Current Applications of Advanced Technology in California Archaeology )
  • Laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) shows considerable promise as a minimally invasive technique for chemical characterization of rock art pigments. LA-ICP-MS offers high sensitivity to trace elements, requires only a small amount of sample with minimal sample preparation, and allows pigment to be differentiated from host rock to a degree not possible with other characterization methods. Analyses of paint samples taken directly from pictograph panels at Little Lake and of raw pigments previously recovered from excavations at the Stahl Site demonstrate the utility of LA-ICP-MS for making intra- and inter-site comparisons of pigment compositions.
I will try to get copies of the papers up on the web in the near future. The bigger, Society for American Archaeology meetings have a large number of CSULB presenters. I'll report on those soon.

No comments: