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marble, chert, volcanic rocks), amber, and metals, including coins. Apart from NAA, XRF, XRD, and spectrographic methods, techniques currently in use include proton-induced X-ray emission and proton-induced gamma ray emission (PIXE-PIGME), inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry (ICP), lead isotope analysis, and electron microscopy. Major changes in the instrumentation of these techniques have meant that more elements can be analyzed with higher precision. The choice of technique depends on the availability to the archaeologist and the cost.
A variety of archaeometric techniques could be used to characterize these wine cups and containers from a newly discovered storeroom.
(Gamma)
The need for characterization studies is the result of a reorientation in the ways archaeologists have perceived how trade and exchange have operated in the past. The realization that migrationist/invasion models could not adequately explain the distribution of material across the landscape, or changes in societies over time, led archaeologists to look at other mechanisms. By studying trade and exchange, the intention was to reconstruct the economies and organizations of past societies and their changes over time. Access to and control over prestige goods through trade and exchange were seen as the prime movers for change leading to ranked societies.
Colin Renfrew (1982, 94) pointed out that dating is the most fundamental archaeometric technique available to archaeologists. Two of the most important techniques that revolutionized archaeology are dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating. Today, many techniques are used in dating, including luminescence, fission track, potassium argon, fluorine and nitrogen dating, obsidian hydration dating, and amino racemisation analysis on bone. When these techniques were developed, archaeologists were ready to apply them.
Dendrochronology was pioneered in the beginning of the twentieth century by the astronomer A.E. Douglass. The Laboratory of Tree-ring Research at the University of Arizona was set up shortly afterward, and a few more laboratories added forty years later. Toward the
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