Lake Shelbyville Project
In the 1980's, a study was funded by the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign, Illinois, as part of their effort to recover and analyze artifacts from Lake Shelbyville, Illinois.
Archaeometric techniques were employed to determine why four ceramic forms from sixteen sites in the area called the American Bottom (the floodplain of the Mississippi around East St. Louis from the Illinois river north to the Kaskaskia River) had such similar shape and decoration. Were they all manufactured at one site and then traded to the others? Or were they manufactured from local clay at several sites, with the technology being shared information between potters who came into contact through marriage, war or other means?
In this provenance study, thin-sections were examined using a petrographic microscope to study the structure and mineral composition of the clay and to confirm the types of temper used. Then selected samples were prepared for chemical analysis by neutron activation, which yields major, minor, and trace elements. Both techniques revealed several distinct clays and different tempers (shell, grog, and bone), supporting the second hypothesis of multiple ceramic manufacturing centers.
For more information:
Riley, T. J., Hopke, P., Martin, R. & Porter, J. (1988). Provenience of Selected Middle Mississippian Vessel Forms from the Central Mississippi Valley Using Hierarchical and Non-Hierarchical Clustering of NAA Results. In (S. Wisseman, J. Isaacson, W. William, T. Riley, J. Fittipaldi, D. Mann, & P. Hopke, Eds) Instrumental Techniques in Archeological Research. USA-CERL Technical Report N-88/24, pp. 82-99.
Riley, T. J., Hopke, P., Martin, R. & Porter, J. (1994). The Diffusion of Technological Knowledge: a Case Study in North American Ceramic Analysis. In (S. U. Wisseman & W. S. Williams, Eds) Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials.Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, pp. 41-58.