Improved discrimination of biogenic and diagenetic elements in Palaeolithic mammoth ivory and bone from Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of Southwestern Germany
Fiche du document
2023
- handle: 10670/1.klhymj
- hal: hal-04106302
- doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2023.02.006
Ce document est lié à :
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1016/j.quaint.2023.02.006
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ , info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
Mots-clés
Bones Diagenesis Ion beam analysis Prehistoric mammoth ivories Synchrotron X-ray spectroscopySujets proches
Mammoth Archidiskodon Stegoloxodon Mammuthus Parelephas Metarchidiskodon DicyclotheriumCiter ce document
Laurent Tranchant et al., « Improved discrimination of biogenic and diagenetic elements in Palaeolithic mammoth ivory and bone from Hohle Fels Cave in the Swabian Jura of Southwestern Germany », HAL-SHS : archéologie, ID : 10.1016/j.quaint.2023.02.006
Métriques
Partage / Export
Résumé
Mammoth ivory was used by humans to manufacture personal ornaments, sculptures or music instruments during the Upper Palaeolithic. These objects are among the first and most precious witnesses of ancient artistic behaviour. Archaeological ivory, however, has been subjected to complex alteration processes due to exchange with its burial environment over time. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the diagenetic phenomena in order to develop adequate conservation measures for ivory artefacts. The element-analytical study of ivory artefacts can shed light on these processes and can help to track the origin of these objects. In this work we studied twelve mammoth ivory samples and ten bone samples coming from the Palaeolithic site Hohle Fels located in the Swabian Jura. Mammoth bone samples were included in the study in order to find eventual differences in the diagenetic changes between ivory and bone material. We performed ion beam analysis (PIXE/PIGE) at the microfocus beamline of the accelerator NewAGLAE at C2RMF and micro-X-ray fluorescence (XRF) mappings at the PUMA beamline at synchrotron SOLEIL. The obtained PIXE/PIGE results are consistent with previous studies of ivories from Hohle Fels and other contemporaneous European sites in terms of possible site-specific (Zn, Br, Sr contents) and diagenetic markers (F content). XRF mappings and their semi-quantitative analyses confirm former observations and provide additional criteria for the classification of endogenous and exogenous elements. Based on our results we could not find significant difference in the diagenetic alterations between archaeological ivory and bone samples for the studied archaeological site.