Preface

Summary

The purpose of this book is to provide an introduction to the applications of analytical chemistry to archaeology. The intended audience is advanced students of archaeology, who may not have all of the required background in chemistry and physics, but who need either to carry out analytical procedures, or to use the results of such analyses in their studies. The book is presented in three parts. The first is intended to contextualize analytical chemistry for students of archaeology – it illustrates some of the archaeological questions which have been addressed, at least in part, by chemical analysis, and also chronicles some of the long history of interaction between chemistry and archaeology. Additionally, it introduces chemistry as a scientific discipline, and gives a brief historical introduction to the art and science of analytical chemistry.

The second part consists of seven chapters, which present a range of analytical techniques that have found archaeological application, grouped by their underlying scientific principles (absorption/emission of visible light, absorption of infrared, etc.). Each chapter describes the principles and instrumentation of the methods in some detail, using mathematics where this amplifies a point. The majority of each chapter, however, is devoted to reviewing the applications of the techniques to archaeology. We do not pretend that these application reviews are comprehensive, although we do hope that there are enough relevant references to allow the interested reader to find her or his way into the subject in some depth.