0019 – Presenting an archaeometric approach to stone idols

Next Monday, in the context of a meeting in Abrantes, Portugal, dedicated to interaction of objects and raw materials in the 3^rd millennium BC, a first approach to the study of the provenance of stone idols and vessels from Perdigões will be presented. A collaboration of Nia-Era and the ITN-IST in the context of Charisma program. The analyses were done at the Nuclear Analysis and Radiography Department, MTA Centre for Energy Research, H-1121 Budapest, Hungary.

 

A general approach to the interaction in Perdigões, regarding raw materials, objects and people, was presented in Madrid in the beginning of this month, in the context of a meeting dedicated to debate the use of resources in this same period.

0007 – Stone idols and pots from funerary context: provenance and interaction

Stone idol from cremations pit 40 (Excavations NIA-ERA Arqueologia)

A new archaeometric project is being developed at Perdigões regarding the determination of the raw materials and their provenance for the stone idols and pots from some of the Perdigões funerary contexts.

In fact, the artefactual assemblages from the pits with human cremations present considerable differences when compared with those from the tholoi tombs, although the radiocarbon dating shows that these several feature were simultaneously in use for some time. Archeometric studies to determine the raw materials and their provenance can then be helpful to evaluate the nature of these differences inside Perdigões and also to further characterize the interaction network in which the site was involved.

This project will be carried out by the Nuclear and Technological Institute, Lisbon, in collaboration with the Budapest Neutron Centre. The techniques to be use in archaeological materials and raw material samples from several areas of Central-South Portugal are the Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA), Neutron Tomography, External Beam PIXE and Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS).

The work will start tomorrow, at Budapest.