* The Art of using Science for the Study of Cultural Relics *
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been over the past 32 years one of the most important focus points on the application of Science to the Cultural Heritage of the Eastern Mediterranean. The application was founded by the late Iz Perlman in 1973 as the "Archaeometry Unit" whereas since 1997 this type of research is dubbed the "Jerusalem Task Force", a multi-interdisciplinary setup that has continued the former legacy and includes at present not only the initial provenance of pottery by neutron activation analysis but also comprises the study of ancient textiles and the research in bio-polymers for the conservation of our cultural heritage
Since October 2001, two members of our group, Jan Gunneweg and Charles Greenblatt have been appointed by the Israeli ministery of science and the European Community to serve as delegates of Israel in the Cost Action G-8 Management Committee that deals with the COoperation between Science and Technology (hence COST) applied to the bio- and material cultural relics of Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.
During the nineteen seventies and eighties this type of research listenend to the name of Archaeometry that never was well understood by people who needed it the most: Archaeologists and Curators and Museum Conservators. In order to understand the name "Archaeometry" a short explanation is offered hereunder to make the term more familiar.
Archaeometry--i.e. measurements applied to archaeology--borrows
its name from the science magazine Archaeometry founded at Oxford
University (UK) during the early nineteen-fifties.
Archaeometry is a collective name for an analytical approach
to define archaeological cultural remains by means of Natural
Sciences to obtain quantitative and qualitative measurements in the domain of six
important fields in Archaeology or Art or, in short, "Cultural Heritage":
PROSPECTION (A study of Where and What to excavate)
CHRONOMETRY (Methods for Dating the architectural, museum and
archaeology finds)
PROVENIENCE (PROVENANCE) (The search for the Center or Site where an artefact
was manufactured)
ENVIRONMENTOLOGY (The study of ancient climatic, volcanic
and geological changes in a given area at a given time span)
BIOSPHERE (The research into the Palaeo-ethnic-botany and
Zoo- and Anthropo-archaeology by studying its Bio-Polymers)
RESTORATION-CONSERVATION (The study of how to restore and take care
of ancient artifacts belonging to our cultural heritage)
Primarily, the research at the Hebrew University was focused on the establishment
of the chemical composition of ancient pottery through Instrumental Neutron
Activation Analysis to learn W H E R E pottery was
manufactured (the Provenience, Provenance or Origin). This may
help the archaeologist/historian in her/his search for the routes
that pottery traveled (the Trade) and H O W ancient
pottery was made (the Technology).
In 1967, a nuclear technique, Instrumental Neutron Activation
Analysis was developed to establish a quantitative chemical
"fingerprint" of ceramic and volcanic obsidian, basalt and
pumice. The "fingerprint " is unique so that one can trace where objects have been manufactured.
Hence, specific ancient interregional Trade Relations, Trade
Routes, perhaps even Colonization and Migrations of families, tribes
and masses are potentially being traced through the provenance of
their artifacts
Also the ancient pottery MANUFACTURE
TECHNOLOGY may be studied in the light of the chemical
compositions obtained by Neutron Activation Analysis and may
further be complemented by thin sections from analyzed pottery
(Petrography) and Thermoluminescence combined with Magnetic Susceptibility. One may be able to tell how a specific potter levigated and/or tempered raw clay that he used to model a pot and what was
the firing temperature of the kiln, providing important
information about the technology that ancient man employed.
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