Comparative Evaluation of Elemental Analysis Techniques for Archaeological Materials

Sammanfattning

Archaeological research aims to maximise the information gained from each archaeological object found. One way this is done is by studying the object's elemental composition and multiple methods can be used for this type of analysis. The choice of method depends on several considerations, some specific to archaeological research and some general. This project aims to investigate the advantages and limitations, as well as compare the results from some of these methods. The methods included will be X-Ray Fluorescence Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (XRF-EDS), Scanning Electron Microscopy Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) and Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The investigation is conducted by first doing an extensive literature study to understand the methods' theoretical limitations and then after this, all methods are tested on reference materials and real archaeological samples to test any practical limitations. XRF-EDS and SEM-EDS will be tested on a buckle, while XRF-EDS and ICP-MS will be tested on soil samples. It was found that both XRF-EDS and SEM-EDS performs well on the ideal case with a polished reference material, however, the agreement was worse on the buckle. This was possible due to corrosion on the sample. For soil samples, neither XRF-EDS nor ICP-MS performed well on reference materials. The digestion of the sample was also found to impact the ICP-MS measurements to a great extent. It was further discovered that due to the compositional nature of the data, poor measurements of one element negatively affect the others and direct comparisons between different methods are hard. Thus, only one method should be chosen for analysis and great care should be taken when comparing results from different methods and/or laboratories.