 Welcome everyone to the third day of the International Obsidian Conference 2021. This is Getting to the Point Wari Obsidian Distribution Reduction and Use in Southern Peru, in the Southern Frontier, on the Southern Frontier by Dr. Donna Nash. Thank you so much. I'll be presenting a paper Getting to the Point, so I'll get to the point. Obsidian was mobilized in a special way by the Wari Empire during the Andean Middle Horizon. Previous research has identified the sources of obsidian distributed through imperial channels of circulation, which supplied Wari enclaves and may have been traded to contemporaneous polities such as Tiwanaku. Geochemical techniques can track the movement of obsidian across the Andes, but it cannot elucidate how this resource was managed and processed as it traveled between locales of acquisition and its eventual users. Materials recovered from Sarabaul and Saramahia, two settlements in Moquegua on the Southern Frontier of the Empire, more than 500 kilometers from the capital, form a sizable assemblage to make inferences about the distal links in this chain. Items from households, ritual offerings, and two production locales demonstrate that the frontier province of Moquegua received preforms rather than nodules with cortex for use by imperial citizens. This manner of distribution may have been typical of multiple provinces, especially those without obsidian sources or a history of obsidian used before Wari incursion. Obsidian may have been processed in the Wari capital and perhaps a few other facilities near sources before it was distributed to provincial elites. One type of Wari obsidian point has a diagnostic shape found throughout the empire. I suggest that these classic Wari laurel leaf points are diagnostic byfaces because they derive their general form from the processing of cores or large flakes into preforms for distribution. On the other hand, smaller triangular points also fashioned from obsidian were made from flakes removed from preforms through efficient bifacial reduction. These are more variable in form and resemble local points made from other materials. In this paper, I describe the process of obsidian reduction in Wari's southern province. I detail the evidence from the palace on Cervalol as it may be a Wari technology. Studies of the Wari political economy have focused on decorated pottery and its use for feasting. Obsidian acquired and distributed through formal imperial channels probably reached a greater proportion of the populace than Wari decorated pottery, at least in Moquegua. Thus, the study of obsidian, its reduction, distribution and use offers a new dataset for understanding the articulation between communities and Wari provincial agents throughout the Andes. The Wari polity stretched from Cajamarca in the north to Moquegua in the south, a distance of some 1,100 kilometers. The capital was in the central Andes by Cucho Peru. Wari political expansion was materialized during the seventh century CE by the construction of provincial centers, changes in settlement patterns and the introduction of new artifact styles. Since the Wari empire is a prehistoric polity determining its size and strength relies on material culture. In broad strokes, the assemblage associated with the Wari archaeological culture consists of distinctive or canonical architecture which may be executed using different materials but is consistent in form and the organization of space. Ceramic styles are also important but can be equivocal when iconography is the basis for inference and attributes of technology, locales of production and manner of distribution are not considered. Somewhat unusual and perhaps unique to Wari as an Andean complex society is the very diagnostic and widely dispersed classic Wari laurel leaf point. This unique aspect of the Wari assemblage begs the question why? Why are the points diagnostic over such a large area? The relatively similar appearance might be understandable if these items were prestige goods, symbols of power with a limited distribution, like the Darian mace heads perhaps they were made as weapons with fancy versions used to display wealth and authority. This possibility, however, is not supported by the corpus of representational art. Powerful people of supernatural or supernatural entities are not depicted holding spears. Instead, axes and spear throwers are common. Figures are shown with smaller dark points on textiles and pottery at the ends of arrows and at level darts. Smaller triangular points are more suitable for darts or arrows. Most examples of Wari laurel leaf points are too large for darts or arrows. Obsidian points of all forms are used as offerings and ritual deposits. Outside these contacts, retouch flakes affiliated with edge maintenance are found in domestic settings and clustered in hearth ash, which indicates Aquitidian household use. Many points exhibit asymmetrical use swear consistent with cutting or shaving, although some examples could have been used for darts. Obsidian was not reserved for weaponry. That is clear. If that were the case, then Serra Mejio was a community of soldiers, each of whom maintained their own weapons. I prefer a scenario where women used obsidian to perform domestic tasks and sharpen their tools as needed. Despite Berger's early revelations about the relationship between obsidian and the warry polity, most scholars focus their attention on ceramic styles to make interpretations. Geochemical sourcing has shown that pottery of high quality that closely matches what is found in the imperial core, as well as more modest items previously considered derived imitations, were both produced locally using similar materials and techniques. This diagnostic form of some warry obsidian points, I'm sorry, the diagnostic form of some warry obsidian points could be explained in the same manner. However, sources of obsidian are fewer than sources of clay and provided the empire the opportunity to channel distribution through nodes in the political hierarchy. This type of control can never be absolute. Large complex polities cannot control the activity of all its citizens. No doubt some obsidian would have moved outside the imperial network in ancient black markets supplied by outlaws and smuggling. Given this caveat, the features of warry laurel leaf points, other obsidian points and tools, the size and type of debatage all provide clues to understand how obsidian moves through the empire and was processed along the way. Since the warry empire could control the movement and processing from the source to its ultimate destination and households, it is a significant line of evidence to chart the polity scope and the strength of the relationship between nodes in the imperial network. Geochemical analyses have identified the sources of obsidian and variation within them, and we learned about that on Friday, of primary importance where quespecesa and alka, as well as chuvai, which was also used by Tiwanaku. Tripsovich and Contreras' study at quespecesa reported primary and assay flakes on the surface near quarry pits with little evidence of advanced stages of reduction, likewise, Jennings and Glosscock reported little evidence of reduction at sources of alka obsidian. This suggests that nodules were removed from sources in most periods without much processing. Settlements covered with reduction debris have been located in the vicinity but have not been studied. Nonetheless, some inferences can be made based on materials found at different sites. Studies of obsidian artifacts and production debris from the warry heartland show that some cores were transported there. Cortex was present on tools from vegetaic moco, a central sector of the capital, and Contrapata, a site 12 kilometers from the city. Those studies found materials with Cortex. The majority of pieces analyzed were larger than a quarter inch, a result of the screen size used during excavations. At Contrapata, Ventech found that 18% of obsidian flakes and shatter had some Cortex. Kaplan found a slightly higher percentage of flakes with Cortex among her sample from vegetaic moco. This pattern is not replicated in Moquegua, where only four pieces with Cortex has been observed in analysis of over 2,000 pieces. This sample includes smaller pieces of reduction waste, points in production, finished tools, and preforms. Located in the Toronto tributary of the Osmury drainage, Sarabaul and Saramahia are adjacent hills occupied by warry-affiliated households that form two sectors of a low-density urban center designed to represent dual organization, a trait common to later Andean sites such as Inca Cusco. Sarabaul is a mesa with monumental architecture on the summit and clusters of modest terraced dwellings on its flanks. Saramahia is a steep dome-shaped hill that follows the same general pattern. The low swale between the two hills was occupied by irrigated agricultural fields. The site was occupied by warry-sponsored frontier colonists of diverse origins and local people drawn from the middle and coastal valley. Obsidian has been recovered from every house excavated in the Baul-Mihia settlement cluster, but the types of items recovered differ between the two sites. On Sarabaul, the sample I discussed comes from the palace, located on the summit's eastern end. The palace had personnel adept at reducing preforms to points and debitage is present in several rooms. On Saramahia, I excavated the house of a specialist who shaped points, possibly in service to their neighbors. The debris from sharpening or edge maintenance has been found in all houses. Some classic warry-loral leaf points and published photos appear to be preforms. Preforms can be recognized by irregular profiles along their length and uneven surfaces, whereas a point or finish tool should have a relatively straight profile along its length. Preforms are transformed into points through removing flakes of various sizes. Points reduced from preforms are relatively thin, have straight profiles and maintain the leaf shape. On the other hand, smaller triangular points, for the most part, can be made from flakes removed from preforms. They are byproducts derived from preform reduction, hence they are slightly bent in profile. The preforms serve as cores for flake removal, but end their use life as points or knives. This manner of reduction sequence requires skill and technical knowledge. People who do not know how to reduce a preform may use it as tool. Also, personnel with access to an abundance of obsidian may not choose to reduce it in an efficient manner. The features of obsidian tools and debitage at a site may provide clues to infer access and participation in the imperial network of distribution. On Cerebaul, two large preforms were found, one on top of the other, in a construction offering under the floor of a room in the palace. These pieces are on display at Museo Contesuyu, although I was permitted to study these specimens one afternoon in the Dark Exhibition Hall. Both exceed 90 by 60 millimeters in size and have sizable flake scars from the removal of pieces large enough to make small points or other tools, the largest of which measured 30 by 30 millimeters. The Cerebaul Palace Assemblage provides many examples from which to infer the reduction sequence of preforms, which could be used as multi-directional cores. Flakes removed from preforms were then shaped into triangular points, most of which could be fashioned from a flake 30 by 30 millimeters in size or less. Flakes of several shapes could be used to make points. Short, wide flakes were often selected. The bulb of percussion would be oriented to one lateral side of the base. The flake was often polished to create a rough surface resembling frosted glass. Early in the process, the bulb may be removed if it was overly thick. This appears to have broken some points in process as one side is often missing from unfinished points. Detailing of edges was not finished until the bulb was reduced and the base was shaped. Pressure flaking was used to shape flakes into triangular points in maintenance of the tools. Dear antler tines were found in the palace and were recovered from one household on Ceremajia. Ceremajia has a greater number of pieces. However, the majority are retouched flakes or small thinning flakes or shaping flakes. Points run small. In contrast, specimens from cerebellum include preforms, large and small points, flakes of sufficient size to make points, as well as thinning and shaping flakes. To date, no preforms have been found on Ceremajia. In general, more modest houses on the slopes of Ceremajia have smaller points, or the only evidence of use in the structure was the presence of retouched flakes. This pattern supports a model of distribution where most obsidian originated from state channels of circulation. I suggest that large preforms with little to no cortex were delivered to elite governors on cerebellum via imperial channels. Flakes may have been removed before they were transferred to subordinate elites occupying the summit of Ceremajia. These subordinate elites may have also engaged in this type of skimming. Elites charged with the supervision of commoners such as those on Ceremajia distributed these items to clients in small amounts, perhaps at events with feasting to mark occasions of calendrical import. Distribution of this kind may have fostered a patron-client relationship while avoiding the broader distribution of items like decorated pottery that held a higher symbolic value. Clients may have received nearly exhausted preforms, flakes, or small triangular points. Obsidian is ideal because it is consumed as it is used, although households could reserve obsidian for exchange or ritual offerings. If this was the case, obsidian may be a better indication of community connection with the warry empire than decorated pottery. The appearance or increase of obsidian resources in an area during the warry era may stem from a state institution that distributed obsidian to create relations of reciprocity or in debt clients to state-sponsored patrons. I suspect there is more to the warry political economy than feasting alone. Context is important. Areas with an abundance of obsidian or communities without the technical skill may have followed different methods of reduction and use. However, in zones where few pieces of obsidian arrived before warry incursions such as Moquegua, the prevalence of obsidian debitage in households and particularly the presence of the diagnostic warry laurel leaf point probably indicates participation in imperial channels of exchange or incorporation in the empire's political economy. As people attending this talk on a Sunday for which I am very grateful are well aware, lithic artifacts have a significant story to tell about the scope and strength of the warry empire and other complex societies. Thank you. Perfect, thank you, Donna. Any questions? Yes, I have one. Nice presentation. As you know, in the arrowheads, the weight is important. And do you have the weight? Oh, yes. So at Sarabal and Saramahia, I don't think that we have any pieces that are arrows. I think we have a few things that might be at ladle darts. I did have an occasion to look at materials from Tiffany Tung site at Beringa. And I think she has arrow points. But I don't think any of the materials that we have are small enough for arrows. Okay. How do you think about the how specializes? What the process? So you're asking me how specialized point production was? Okay. So I don't think that every household would have had the skill or someone with the skill to reduce a preform to a point. I do have indications for all stages of that process in the palace. So the palace on Sarabal, which is the most luxurious house in my sample of almost 30 houses that we've excavated, had someone who knew how to do that. However, on Saramahia, where I've excavated over 20 houses, only one of those houses indicates the kind of debris associated with the whole process. And so I think that it would have been a specialist that performed that task, whereas a greater proportion of the population would have been able to say sharpen a tool and maintain the edge for using it in the household. I hope that answers your question. Okay. Thank you. I understand the production of preforms was made for one group of people. And the finish napping of the arrowhead was finished for other people. So I don't think anything is an arrow. And I try really hard not to use the word productile point. I mean, we all see like a triangular thing with a tang, and we think it went on the end of some weapon or hunting tool. But I really would like to advocate that we look at these tools critically. And I think that the majority of the pieces I have are domestic use. They were used for cutting. Most of them were found in kitchens. The debris like from uses all in kitchens next to hearts. And so I think that I do have some atlatal darts in the palace. But they're the exception and not the rule. And so I think that in the palace, preforms are coming in. And they are able to reduce them into tools of their choosing, whether those are knives for kitchen tasks or darts for atlattles. On the other commoner, or the more modest night of Sarmahia, I think that they're all for kitchen tasks. And people are receiving probably flakes that can be shaped into other tools or points. And if they want a point, they have to take it to the neighbor, the specialist, who will make it into a point for them if that's what they want. But they may choose to just take that flake and use it as a flake. You don't really need it to be a triangular point to do a lot of stuff with it. So I hope that clarifies the assemblage. Okay. Thank you. Donna, do you find them in burial contexts? So we don't have burials. All of our graves are looted except for those of three children, three babies, we have three babies and adolescents that aren't looted, and they don't have points with them. But we do have this pattern where you'll have two points included in a ritual offering all over the place, like under floors or on top of burnt offerings or next to burnt offerings or along with pot smashes. So that most of the points that are kind of nice are from those kinds of contexts. I wonder when the representation of obsidian on iconography began. You mentioned Wari, it was definitely happening in Nazca. Of course, that's on the way to, ESPC says on the way to Nazca. I did find a representation of what could be an obsidian spear on a paracus textile. And I know that there are paracus objects that have really big obsidian points on them. Like, I think there's some sacrificial knife I found. I can't remember what museum it's in. But I think that by the time we get to Wari, we're not having like big spear points on the end of spears. If anybody's aware of one, please let me know. But I did do a thorough search of the literature for that. I wonder, you mentioned early reduction on apapari sites. I wonder about Alka, because Kurt, Dave's here, he might know the answer to that. The presence of early reduction at Alka, or maybe it falls off at a certain time period. The archaic sites have it and later sites don't. Later stage reduction that is. Right. Yeah. I mean, I think that there is some early stage reduction going on at the Capitol. There's nothing to rule out that there wouldn't have been a site kind of between the source and these major trunk roads that we talked about on Friday that's doing some of that reduction. I'm not suggesting that they all went to the Capitol and then back out. However, I do think that a lot of this reduction, that the Empire is mobilizing it and controlling the flow, and they're not carrying nodules all the way out to Sarabaul or other provincial sites. They're reducing it into a standardized form before it moves. I like your idea about the affiliation, cultural affinity with obsidian in the kitchen is showing that you're part of the Wari community because, and that might especially be true to the north where there's fewer sources, where everyday herders don't have access to another source. Like up at Pakopampa or someplace with no other sources. Yeah, I was, John Toppett kindly shared with me a picture he had of a laurel leaf point from the area around Sarawamaru and he told me that the area is just covered with obsidian points around Sarawamaru. They're just like all over the ground and that farmers will collect them and sell them to tourists. And so I would be really excited to maybe go look at things from the northern end of the Empire and see just how similar they are in terms of their reduction and that kind of thing. That would be very cool. That would test my model essentially. Does anyone else have questions? I would say, Nico, speaking to Alca, they did find I think like 13 large Wari by-faces at Aspiratupampa that were composed of Alca I. So there is some, you know, an assured action into these by-faces from the Alca source that are going out. So not all just quespeciesa. Oh, in fact, like, I mean, I'm working with Dave and Ryan on this and I took a look at it this morning and most of this stuff is Alca. But my specialist work shop on Ceramigia has a bunch of the minor sources too. So that that'll be interesting to explore. Any other questions? Yeah, there was a large collection of by-faces from Markoamichuco that Ulle had found and then the others were found by John. And as my recollection, I ran some of that stuff. My recollection was there was both quespeciesa and Alca together, even though they were both by-faces. Ceramigia is a weird site, you know. It seems to be heavily involved in the ritual of the North. So I'm not sure what the original context of all that obsidian is. It may not be normal household debris. It may be sort of a more special context. In contrast, you know, Markoamichuco has a greater diversity, I think, of functions. But no one has ever made it clear where the obsidian comes from at that site. But my impression was that at Markoamichuco, they were already completed by-faces. And then there's ones that from San José de Moro, where there are also a large number of completed by-faces. But I don't think there's any deputage. And that seems to be a common pattern. Like Espiritu Pampas is another case. But I think there are many cases. So I mean, the role of these large obsidian by-faces in terms of state symbolism and in relationship to Wari ritual, I think, is a really interesting subject that sort of complements what you are describing in terms of the daily household usage of obsidian. That was a great paper. Thank you. Yeah, so these by-faces are preforms. I showed you the two largest ones. But a lot of the pieces in ritual offerings are also kind of unfinished. I mean, I just maybe I'm assuming too much. But I think that if they're going to be symbols of power, or people are going to display them, that they're going to make them look a little nicer than they look. So I think they might be offerings as in like raw material wealth, as opposed to kind of finished tools. So that's something that I kind of want to push forward, is like it looks like the smaller points are getting all the effort, especially things that might be darts or symmetrical, they're balanced, they'll fly. If you try to put some of these other points on the end of something, it's going to go cock-eyed off into some random other direction. I do think it was primarily distributed as some kind of commodity to in-debt clients, as opposed to being like these symbols of power. Well, thanks everyone for coming on a Sunday. I really appreciate it. Thanks Donna. Is Rodrigo Esparza here? I guess we have a few more minutes before Matt's talk. If anybody wants to chat about Donna's paper more. Donna, what wasn't Sarah Bowell reoccupied at some point later during the conquest? Or am I mistaken about that? So there is evidence that a few of the rooms were cleared and used as barracks during the War of the Pacific. And we do find bullets in a few places. There might be a bullet from Bowell. I know I have two bullets from Saramahia. But the palace doesn't seem to have that kind of disturbance. We do have two or three intrusive ink offerings that we found in the upper strata of the palace. But my analysis, I excluded those materials. So I really focused on things in intact contexts and direct contact with the floor in areas that weren't disturbed. So there are many more obsidian pieces in the area that I excavated as a palace. But this sample really like limited and excluded things that might be disturbed. Quick question if it's okay. I just want to ask you, have you tried to refit some pieces in the in the layer you showed that the one which was the yellow yellow obsidian you indicated? So for me, it was seems like really in situ layer. And have you tried to somehow just to refit some pieces or it doesn't have any logic idea? Well, I guess, I mean, I don't even wash them. The idea of like loading them together horrifies me. Sorry, that's like, I guess an old world thing. But also the that yellow debris, like I made it yellow so you could see it, right? Okay. I figured out how to do that in Photoshop. I was so delighted. Anyway, I think they're like too tiny even. And and we have the sourcing data, like Dave Reed has recently like went through and taken some of the bigger pieces there and tried and source them. And that debris that you saw comes from like eight different sources. So I really, yeah, I don't, I don't know if it would even be possible to try that. I understand. Yeah. Thank you. The clear material, was it mostly Alka or QSPCS? Or Chiwai? There's not much Chiwai there. We do have a few pieces of Chiwai, like, maybe like 10 between the two, you know, between the sample we've XRF, which isn't nearly as large as the sample that I analyzed. We, I was trying to find, because on Friday, we were talking about how sometimes people like obsidian just because it's pretty. And so our pretty obsidian is the clear with like the tiger stripes, like we have quite a few where they'll make the point so that it's diagonal. And the tiger stripes go this way. But the pictures weren't there. There were older pictures, they're a little blurry. It actually takes some skill to photograph obsidian. And I, it took me a while to figure that out. Backlit? Is that how you did it? On glass? No. I actually just had Cyrus been a Cosme do it. So I just found the right person to take some pictures. I haven't done it. We do have quite a bit of clear material, although the clear stuff is in the brewery more. And so it may be that they favored it and that it was higher value because the brewery does have like more luxury goods than my sample from the palace. And the brewery is also later in time. So I haven't had a chance to look at the materials from the brewery, but I have looked at Ryan's photographs of the materials from the brewery and there are a lot of clear points from the brewery. Ours are more of the gray tiger stripe. The red stuff is very rare in the palace, but we do get maybe 20% of the material on Mejia might be red. Maybe 15 to 20% has the red coloring on Mejia. So they were reciprocating with beer then for their obsidian. You know, in terms of the color, yeah. Have you seen the red color on any other source material besides key species in your sample? So I just got the spreadsheet from Dave like, I don't know, two weeks ago and I didn't go through and match up the pictures of my points to the sources yet. I'm sorry. I can't answer that right now. Hey, Richard, this is a large area of the alka one out outcrop has the mahogany or the reddish or occasionally it's red and black marble. That's the source area and we have seen artifacts made of it, but I I don't know if they're wary. And what other colors? Brown as well. Black, brown. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the brown stuff, reddish brown, black, clear, black and clear striped. Yeah. That's about it, I think. I think early on we really had high hopes of visually sourcing things when it was expensive and we didn't have XRF. And so Ryan and I went through and purposely picked the different colors. This probably was materials we sent to Mike Glasscock for INAA like a long, long time ago. And we have there was no correlation between color and source. You can't do that. It'd be nice. And there's no green obsidian from Peru either. Yeah. I haven't seen any. You know when I was first starting the obsidian project in the early 70s, it was just an idea and I was with Roe who never liked the idea to begin with. And I found a piece in the excavations of what looked like a green flake and I knew about Pachuca and so I said, oh my goodness, maybe they have green obsidian in Peru and Roe just laughed at me. So that's just beer glass. I said, well, don't jump to conclusions. I think I'm going to run it back in Berkeley and say, okay, do what you want. So I took it back and we ran and it was beer glass. You really like that. Pilsen Kayal, I think it was. There's some black shirt and I've heard rumors that it's coming from Puno that people have run as obsidian and it's come back as as church. So we have to be aware of that, that there is some church that people get fooled and think is obsidian. But hopefully no beer glass. All right. Well, it's 940 here. So let's go ahead and move on to the next paper with Matt Bruvange, Nicholas Chipsovich and Richard Berger titled Digitization and Preservation of Legacy Data Sets, Continued Adventures in Salvage Archaeometry. Can everyone see my slides now that I'm unmuted? Developing out of the scientific advancements in chemical and nuclear research as a result of essentially the production of the nuclear bomb in the 1940s. Geochemical analysis of obsidian in many different ways is now kind of a standard aspect of most archaeological research in areas where obsidian is available. If you're like me who did most of my archaeology in the eastern portion of North America where there is no obsidian, all of this is kind of moot. But at least where obsidian was used by our ancestors, we can analyze it and often do with all sorts of projects, whether it's academic projects, research projects, compliance projects, etc. Essentially anybody with the funds can purchase an instrument today and produce geochemical data with obsidian. And so there's been a decentralization away from large government funded laboratories over the past 30, 40 years and kind of a democratization of data production. In this kind of environment where the production of new data and despite what lots of people would like it to be, archaeology tends to place a prime value on new discoveries and new data, there's oftentimes not a lot of incentive or motivation to revisit old data. But I'm weird and I like to work with old data. And so a number of years ago I began a project focusing on old data and this is kind of a follow-up to some ongoing kind of pursuits in that direction. And I hope to show that not only are old data useful, but we can actually learn things from the process of working with old data. And so to kind of guide you through where I'm going to be going today, I'm going to give you a brief introduction of the Berkeley Laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, not the UC Berkeley Laboratory, and a short discussion of the efforts that have gone into preserving data from that lab. And then I'm going to kind of shift to focus on a specific example and that in that example is Richard Berger's obsidian data that he generated as he just kind of was talking about beginning in the early 1970s. And then I'm going to kind of conclude with what I think are some of the lessons that we can learn from this project and how we can use these data today. So if you don't know, the nuclear archaeology program at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was one of the first generation archaeometry laboratories in the world. It was one of the longest serving, but it was also one of the initial ones along with a couple other ones at Brookhaven, the University of Michigan and several others. It operated between 1960 and 1990, and it was initially conceived by Iz Perlman, who was a nuclear chemist at Berkeley, as a way of making use of nuclear technology and nuclear advancements in a peaceful way. That is something other than killing lots of people. And he was able to convince his student and ultimately collaborator, Frank Asaro, to join him in this project. And you can see them here on the screen. Frank is young and handsome. Iz is the older gentleman sitting down pointing at the pottery, and they were assisted by a nuclear chemist who also worked the laboratory named Helen Michael. Betty Holtzman here was a student who was going to be doing some research on pottery as well with the laboratory. Iz took retirement from Berkeley in the early 1970s, at which point he moved to the university or Hebrew University in Jerusalem to found another archaeometry laboratory. I guess it always makes me kind of self-conscious that I haven't done anything because here's a guy who's found, not only did he work on the atomic bomb, but he founded two archaeometry programs in his lifetime. When he left Berkeley, direction and management of the lab passed to Frank and to Helen. And in their kind of efforts to continue, especially in the 1970s and 80s, continue working to explore peaceful applications of nuclear technologies, the nuclear archaeology program at Berkeley essentially set many of the kind of standard practices that we use today. For example, establishing an in-house ceramic standard that had been doped with different elements to make it appropriate for analyzing archaeological pottery. Also the establishment of standard materials for the analysis of obsidian. In this case, the number of Mesoamerican sources were used in each run to kind of maintain quality control. And lastly, the laboratory was really the first one to work directly with archaeologists, as I'm sure Richard can kind of attest. But throughout their lifetime, Frank and Helen saw themselves as the specialists in the laboratory and with the production of data, but they needed the archaeologists to kind of give them good questions and material and direct their efforts. This process or these kind of standards persist today. If you look at the Murr laboratory with my glass cock and the Oregon laboratory with the Lea Mink, this kind of collaboration between the laboratory specialists and the archaeologists is kind of a standard way that we approach things. So between 1968 and the closing of the Berkeley reactor in 1988, the nuclear archaeology program analyzed by neutron activation at least 12,000 specimens of archaeological, geological, biological interest. And research continued after the closing of the lab in a way that might shock many of you if you've never worked in a nuclear facility where the samples were shipped to the Missouri University Research Reactor in Columbia, where Mike Glasscock would put them into the reactor, make them radioactive, they would be removed, and then they would be shipped cross-country. So while they're still radioactive, back to Berkeley for counting there. So they were still producing data even after the Berkeley reactor had closed. And this continued until Frank Isaro retired in 2006. And at this time, he was asked to basically clean everything out of the office and make space for somebody new. And he contacted Mike Glasscock at Mer and asked if Mike could come out to Berkeley and basically take possession of all of these materials that were left in the laboratory. These materials, as I've talked about elsewhere, and as Frank and David at Don Bay, which talked about in 2007, these materials included paper records, surplus samples, microfiche, photographs of materials that had been analyzed, basically all of the, if you look around laboratories that exist for 20 or 30 years, all of the stuff that accumulates over time. His goal in kind of transferring these things was to ensure that they continue to be useful, that we could continue to work with them and publish on them and find new information within them. And so I had just arrived at the Mer laboratory a year before this, and Mike Glasscock returned in 2006 from Berkeley. And I had just helped him kind of do a similar project with nutrient activation data from the University of Manchester in England. And so he walked into my cubicle one day and dropped about 12 or 15 huge FedEx boxes of stuff, such that I couldn't even leave my cubicle when he did that, and asked me to take care of it. And so between 2006 and 2015, when I left Mer, I basically oversaw the digitization and transcription efforts for these archives. Within three years, so by 2009, we had managed to digitize and transcribe and scan all of the records that Frank had sent to us. And these efforts kind of revealed a couple of very interesting things. First was that they only contain data pertaining to the nutrient activation program at Berkeley. There was no XRF data and no other kinds of data produced by other techniques. And second, those archives that he sent only contained about 50% of the nutrient activation. They had estimated in 2007 that they had analyzed about 10,000 archaeological samples and 2,000 plus samples that were geological and then some other things. But the records that he sent only had about half of that, about 4,500 or so pieces. And so after 2009, I spent a good deal of time trying to track down in very Sherlock Holmes fashion data anywhere that I could find it, whether it was in publications, whether it was in the garages of people who used to collaborate with Berkeley back in the 70s. I even traveled out to Jerusalem and went to Haifa as well because several of the former collaborators were working there and found stacks and stacks of print outs of data that ultimately came back to Missouri. All of these by 2014 had been transcribed and with the help of digital antiquity and the digital archaeological record, all of these data, the scanned notebooks, the handwritten notes, the transcribed data, everything from the nutrient activation program that we had located at that time is now on TDR and can be accessed by anybody who would like it. For those familiar with the Berkeley program, you'll recognize that they're probably most famous for analyzing ceramics from the Near East and the Mediterranean. But it's also important to point out that about 10% of what they analyzed comes from the Americas, about 6% in North and Mesoamerica and about 4% from South America. And most of these data have never been published, kind of keeping with that. Richard and Mike Glaskock have both recently published a book chapter based on an SAA session from a few years ago that actually makes use of some of the NEA data of South American pottery that had been analyzed very early by the laboratory but had never been published. Again, nobody had returned to look at it. And so despite being 40 plus years old, those data are still being worked with and still relevant and highly compatible with MIRR nutrient activation data today. So the nutrient activation data is pretty good. I think it's in a good shape right now. We haven't identified and located all of the data, but we've got about 95 to 97% of it. If you happen to be sitting on some and would like to share it, I'm happy to take it in. But I'm going to focus on the XRF data because nothing that Frank sent to MIRR at the time had XRF data in it. So there's a large portion of the work that was done there that's missing. And just as they made significant contributions to the development of nutrient activation, they did the same with XRF, especially with obsidian. To the best of my knowledge, the Berkeley laboratory was one of the first, if not the first laboratory to produce a highly portable, rapid scan, high resolution XRF spectrometer for use in specifically archaeological collections and conditions. You can actually see it here on the screen. The 1967 version is there with somebody holding a piece of, it looks like a spear point in front of the detector while it's collecting data. Thankfully, the times have changed and we're a little bit safer now. But the 1969 iteration two years later is sitting on the shelf there, the table top behind Jay Walton. And you can imagine it doesn't look highly portable by today's standards. But this is the granddaddy of them all. You could literally carry that into the field or to museum to collect data relatively quickly. Despite, as I mentioned, despite the importance of the XRF program at Berkeley, we don't have any of these data. And most of our efforts have focused on the nutrient activation data. We have in over the course of the past few years, found some of these XRF data. Tom Hester here in Texas has sent me the Texas obsidian project, the project he worked with for the past 40 years or so, collaborating with Frank trying to source obsidian that's found here. We found some Mesoamerican obsidian data that's been published. And then some Near Eastern pottery, they experimented with that. But most of the actual data are simply not present. But the Berkeley records that were sent do contain an item by item list of every single sample that they analyzed, whether it was by nutrient activation by wet chemistry by XRF by whatever. So we actually have an idea of what is out there and where it comes from and who sent it, but no data. For a number of reasons, Richard's Andean obsidian project is probably one of the largest and most appropriate kind of things for this this kind of work. In part because Richard is still around and is willing to share those data. In fact, between about 19, Richard can correct me if I'm wrong, but the first kind of publications of the XRF data and the NA data from the Andean project began coming out in the 1970s. And up until about 1994, Berkeley continued to analyze material for this project. And over the course of that time, they analyzed over 1000 artifacts and source samples from South America, both by nutrient activation XRF as well. The nutrient activation data is had already been transcribed and is already digital. And so we aren't terribly concerned about, you know, we've taken care of that component. But we're interested in the XRF part. Most of the obsidian comes from archaeological sites in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. And I think it's important to clarify because I was talking with a colleague earlier a few weeks ago who said that Richard only began doing work when he was a Yale or that Richard did his XRF work in the geology department at Berkeley. And I would refer to anyone who's kind of confused about that to go back and read the publications from 1970s from 1970s and 1980s where it's pretty clear that he began in the geology department but found the RapidScan WDXRF there to be unsuitable for what he wanted to do. Richard's data and project working with the Berkeley laboratory essentially set the stage for future obsidian sourcing projects in South America, Andean South America in particular. They used a combination of XRF and NAA to identify the sources of materials. But because most of the sources had not been identified on the ground, they first started identifying and classifying types of obsidian. And much work has gone into this and built on that initial foundation to begin to identify the geological sources of these obsidian types. As Richard talked about a few days ago, these efforts still continue. In fact, he introduced or talked about the association of the rare one type with the Chiranya source. And as we'll see by the end of this, hopefully in the next few minutes, it can continue to be built upon. So in 2018, Richard sent a paper case box filled with photocopies and original data pronounced to Nico. Nico contacted me and over the past few years we've basically been working to digitize these data. This is what they look like. For all of you who who think that the brook or tracer three interface with Excel is difficult. This is an 11 by 15 inch dot matrix printout of data. Not digital in any way. So we have to make it digital. So we've got it pretty easy even even if the way that we have it easy is pretty hard. Each page has the sample ID at the top. In this case, B U R 160. The number next to that eight zero three one is the collection of is the run or the assay. H is the position in that assay. And then there's some descriptive data stuck on the side of there. The catalog number is CS five. The site is Chupas. It's from Ayacucho. And it dates to the early intermediate period. That's pretty straightforward. On the left and the right hand side of these, we see the elements of interest. So each row represents an element of interest. And what we're probably the most interested is the data, the quantified elemental abundances. And you see those here on the far right side of this page. So iron here the concentration is 4.721 plus or minus 0.066. And then we have a base one million exponent that both the concentration and the error have to be multiplied by to make sure everything is in parts per million. Fairly straightforward. But let me tell you that transcribing this will give you carpal tunnel syndrome in your hands. But if we want to make use of the data, we have to get it digitally. It's not particularly conducive to digital ways of doing this. That is scanning it and having it text recognized because of the way that it's laid out. So after a few years, we got everything digitized. And all told in this box, the data for about 470 specimens from about 60 archaeological sites in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador are present in the records. Nearly all of these are from Peru, specifically Southern Peru, although there are some samples from Chavin that are present in there. And some of the kind of key publications that correspond with these data are listed at the bottom of the screen. Asaro et al. 94, Berger et al. 94, Berger et al. 2000. We're going to focus on, whoops, mostly the Peruvian and Bolivian obsidian, primarily just for brevity. All told, the Berkeley XRF program analyzed or quantified about 21 different elements. So on each sheet, there's concentrations of 21 elements. And then there's another sheet that corresponds to a different assay where they quantified barium, lanthanum, and cerium. But of these 21 elements, at the time when they were published, Frank and Richard felt that only rubidium, strontium, zirconium, barium, and cerium were sufficiently accurate and precise to publish. And as we'll see, the data actually bear that out. Now, useful for us is that each of these assays contains at least one analysis of the Peruvian and Asaro standard pottery or a well-known obsidian source like El Chayal or Ishtipeke or something like that, so that we can compare them to other laboratories. And that's what you see here is a direct comparison of the Berkeley data for eight different elements compared to the MIR neutral activation or the MIR XRF data for the same obsidian sources. You can see the relationship is more or less linear for most of these. There is greater error associated with some of the elements. For example, manganese is just not worth looking at, and niobium is pretty poor as well. But the key elements, rubidium, strontium, yttrium, and zirconium, tend to look pretty good in direct comparison. We would have to modify them by an intralaboratory correction factor, but they're pretty good. Surprisingly, this now antique instrument that was produced in the 1960s and 1970s still is pulling its way. In part because of the time spent calibrating and building this instrument and the time spent making sure that data were actually good data produced from it. If we just look at the data in a standard bivariate plots, we see the subgroup structure of all the different sources that are present in the data. There's a handful of samples here that we have not been able to assign to a source yet, but that's to be expected. Only about four or five out of the 470 or so could not yet be assigned to a source. What can we learn? Well, it's fun to work with old data, but also I would point out that there's a couple of things we can learn from this. For example, the rare three type that was identified by Richard and Frank, we can actually compare this to the current Mer database. When we do, it appears to match the recently identified serosa source identified a few years ago from samples from Icy Cerumi, one of Richard's colleagues. We can actually use these data to start pinning down some of these unidentified materials. I would also point out that there's a small, let's see if I can do this correctly, there's a small source, a subsource here. It's kind of hard to see, but over here, it's a little bit better, lower barium than quisticisa and a little bit higher zirconium that seems to kind of stand out in other projections of the data. So it's potential, potentially, there might be other smaller subgroups in there that had not previously been recognized. So where are we at? About half of the Andean obsidian data from Berkeley has been digitized and can be made available for researchers. We can still learn from these data in terms of new current archaeological research and continuing to build off of the work of Richard and Frank's earlier publications. But we can also learn a little bit about how to preserve data for ourselves. For example, all calibrations are not equal just because an instrument arrives from the factory and it says it's got a calibration on it. That doesn't mean that it is directly comparable to other instruments and to other calibrations, as Rob talked about yesterday. We as the users have to produce calibrations that are comparable with other laboratories if we want our data to outlast us and to continue to be useful. I would also add that we should be including standard materials with every assay so that there are data available. Don't just shoot your source once or every time you get a new instrument, but include the same materials in every run so that when in 40 more years if you come looking for me and you ask me to work with these data, this is the kind of information I need to make sure or people like me because I'll be dead. People like me will need to make use of your data and to preserve it. I would also point out that we should be storing our data not just digitally but also on paper. As Steve and I were talking about a few days ago, Berkeley government funded laboratory had a mainframe computer with mass storage, but by the time the laboratory, the archaeology program closed, all of that equipment, even though the data were still stored there, the equipment, the hardware obsolete could not be read. The Berkeley laboratory did not have the facilities to read stuff that was from the 1960s or 70s. Even if they did have the hardware, you would have to have the software. While we might think of the Internet will solve all that, we don't know what's going to happen in 40 years, let alone five years. Digital storage is great, but I would also encourage people to consider printing out their data on acid-free paper with each project or reports for each thing and making sure those data are available in open access repositories because you never know when bad things are going to happen and you're not going to be around to explain to people, oh, these data are from that project. The history of working with these data from many different laboratories has taught me, if it's taught me anything, it's taught me that people die unexpectedly. Once they do, so much institutional knowledge goes with them that it's oftentimes almost impossible or very, very difficult to reconstruct that knowledge. Last slide, the research at Berkeley was funded in by several different iterations of what is currently the United States Department of Energy as well as the UC Archaeological Research Facility and the Museum of the Central Bank of Peru. I should thank Icy Tsurumi and Mike Glaskock for sharing the CEROSA data. I have to thank Digital Antiquity for providing the funds and the space to store all the NAA data associated with this and all of the collaborators that worked with Richard and Frank and Helen over the years and specifically Frank and Helen for having the foresight to really focus on developing good calibrations and good instrumentation to make sure that these data will outlast them into the future. And I'm going to plug Nico's talk next, which is the Indian Obsidian Geochemistry Project, where I hope that all of these data will ultimately make themselves or find themselves in the future. Thank you, Matt. Questions or comments? If there's time, I have a couple of comments I could make. Is there time, Nico? Yeah, we have a break after my talk, so I imagine it's okay. I was going to say very quickly that in terms of putting this in historical context that Frank Asaro really actively sought my involvement in this. He deserves all the credit because I actually never worked with any of the geology departments. I was inspired by Mike Coe when I was an undergraduate at Yale who was working with Bob Cobain in Mesoamerican stuff. But when I got to Berkeley, I wanted to continue to do that kind of work. And Bob Hyzer had a really old, old-fashioned XRF that had a lead protective shield that you had to do manually. And he agreed to let me use it after midnight on samples. So I would work between 12 and 4 in the morning, and I kept forgetting to use the lead shield. So it was a worrisome thing. And so I gave a talk at the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley, and Frank came to it, and he said, oh, that was a really great talk, Richard, but it's all wrong. The machine you're using is insufficiently precise to do what you want to do. Why don't you come up to LBL and we can work together? So that was really how it began. It was that Frank came down from LBL to Anthropology to invite me to do this. And so I give him all the credit in the world. He's a great guy and a wonderful scholar. But he wasn't an archaeologist, and he accepted this. And I kept trying to train him to refer to fragments of obsidian as like flakes or artifacts. But he kept calling them sherds. I was never able to cure him of that. For him, they were all sherds because he had started with ceramics. And then just one other minor thing, which is that the reason why we got into the XRF, in part, was specific to Berkeley, that I wanted to use all the samples from what then was the Lowy Museum and it's now the Hearst Museum. But many of them were whole by-faces or other artifacts. And so I didn't, you know, for the NAA, we had to grind everything up and make them into pills. And I couldn't really ask the Lowy to let me do that to all their by-face collections. So really the XRF was in part designed to deal with that specific issue. And part of the reason behind it was to increase the sample size, obviously. But it was also to see whether there were anomalous chemical compositions that might allow us to pick up new sources or rare types. So we would go through, after each run, to see if they fit into the eight major categories if they were ones that might not. And in those cases, we would try to run them by neutron activation. And that way we tried to sort of maximize our sample variability in the kinds of obsidian in the central entities. It's interesting, Richard, that so much of the stuff that they analyzed early on, late 1960s in through by 1975, came from the Lowy, now the Hearst, or other museums. So I was looking at the Penn Museum, and they have a bunch of cuneiform tablets. And each of those tablets, or some, most of them, have little holes drilled into them. And that's exactly how Frank and Helen would extract powder from pottery to minimize the destruction to them. But so much of what they analyzed came from, you know, museum collections, at least initially, because I think that they didn't really, as you said, Frank wasn't an archaeologist. And so they didn't really know how to formulate a question of interest to archaeologists. And so that was like, the great thing about it is they recognize their own kind of ignorance and said, you know, we need, if these are going to be useful things, we need archaeologists to help us. And I think I really respect that. And I think it's, you know, having the wherewithal to admit where you have your blind spots is something I think we can all learn from. Thank you, Matt. And thank you for your efforts over the years to make sure these legacy data remain available for future researchers. So the next paper is presented by me, and it's authored by myself, Michael Glass-Cock from Murr and Eric Kansa from Open Context, and it's titled Building on a Repository of Obsidian Geochemistry for South America. Go ahead and share my screen. So while Matt Boulanger's talk was concerned with legacy data, this next talk is concerned with making sure our analyses that we're doing today will be available to people 50 years in the future by using principles from open data science that I'll be talking about. So today in 2021, it has been nearly 60 years since the onset of archaeological geochemistry work. And now precise and portable x-ray fluorescence instruments are improving access to artifact geochemistry by broader groups of users. At the SA in 2019, we introduced the Andean Geochemical Visualization System, collection of obsidian geochemistry collected, conducted at the University Research Reactor at Missouri, and hosted on the Open Context Repository, connected to a R-shiny-based visualization system. So the key aspect of the system that we're using is that it's built on open source software that can be posted on the web and archived with datasets with no licensing issues so that it will be available for people in the future. Focusing now on South America, we currently have 1,053 data records analyzed by NAA posted on this Open Context Repository. And I'll be giving a brief demonstration of this R-shiny system, which is a JavaScript wrapper for the R statistical package. And it currently supports only basic biplots, but it runs in a web browser. And then after that, I'll show an alternative approach that I've been putting together that involves Jupyter notebooks. So the problem we're trying to solve is the following. There are too few mechanisms for distributing reliable digital data today. Sometimes new publications emerge that don't even have, that still don't include digital datasets. And second, there's a tradition of publishing summarized data instead of the whole dataset. And maybe this is due to the printing limitations of the paper printing format, but today there's no particular reason not to include a dataset. And finally, we are focused here on using this free and open software that can be included in repositories. And that makes data exploration more accessible to people. The basic workflow is the following. One conducts analysis using, say, ADXRF and generate a calibrated results in comma-separated values table. And these can be uploaded to a web app. And then the app will plot these results against ideally obsidian source sample elemental concentrations from the same XRF in the same lab using the same conditions. But, you know, perhaps by another XRF, if you calibrated to the same standards, if your own lab doesn't have access to those source samples. And finally, if none of those previous are possible, then we provide reference data generated for neutron activation analysis and accessible through the open context repository. This system will show data points against ellipses for the source samples and ternary diagrams currently. The presentation today is an example of data sharing infrastructure that clearly depends on adequate training and instrumental calibration. But while there's weak support for a lot of this type of infrastructure today, there's an associated but separate problem which is that a lot of these instruments aren't directly comparable. And we heard from Rob Tycott earlier about the different chemistry he's determined using different instruments in his same lab. So that's a little bit of a pessimistic view on this. But we're assuming that we can improve. Start over. Our presentation today is an example of data sharing infrastructure that clearly depends on adequate training and instrumental calibration. Today there's currently relatively weak support for data hosting and sharing among geochemistry analysts. And there's also these issues of instrument comparability. So while these are related, there are two separate challenges. And here we're primarily concerned with the first, that is data access and supporting link to access between web repositories and apps that provide visualization. These apps also, these repositories also make clear the research history and make citation of the original researchers easier because you can track the origin of these data more easily. The one issue that we will encounter here is that we're describing a method where you're comparing reference data with new data generated on artifacts from XRF. And there's a few issues with doing this type of comparison. Assuming that your XRF is calibrated to match neutron activation analysis when possible, for example, using the MER40 sample obsidian set that the MER facility will send out upon request, another issue is that numbered elements are not available to both an XRF and NAA. I thought I would describe these here. Rebidium is available in both and it's generally very useful. Barium and strontium are only available when the parts per million exceed 50 determined by NAA. And that's because of the calibration, the current conditions of their neutron activation analysis system at MER. Zirconium is available, but only when uranium doesn't interfere. The zirconium peak by NAA is a combination of real zirconium and uranium fission product that produces zirconium. So for samples with low uranium, real zirconium is relatively high. And the fission product contribution of zirconium to the zirconium peak is not significant. But when zirconium is low and uranium is higher than 5 to 10 parts per million, the fission contribution starts to become significant. Mike Glasscock, co-author here, says the correction is extremely complicated. And for that reason, he doesn't generally use zirconium values determined by NAA to identify source. This is particularly true where uranium is present. So thorium is available, but only in L lines in XRF. Zinc is not an incompatible in silica melts. And therefore, you get a lot of variability in zinc values from XRF. And manganese is right adjacent to the iron peak. So it's somewhat overshadowed by that iron peak. And additionally, it's next to the area filtered out by the green filter from Brooker. So we have some issues with using manganese there. So at this point, I'm going to demonstrate, I'm going to play a video demonstrating the current system that's based on R Shiny. Now, Shiny is a JavaScript wrapper for the R statistical package that's produced and managed by the RStudio people. So you may have heard of the tidy verse in RStudio. So Shiny is in that same group and therefore gets good support from them. However, it's somewhat limited as you'll see. It only does by plots and you never really see the R. It's for people who don't want it to see the code at all. This is a demonstration of geothermal visualization system available at the UC Berkeley Archaeological Research Facilities website under the research menu. This is a R Shiny based system that will plot on this by plot system here tables of elemental data from an instrument like an X-ray fluorescence device. The system is preloaded with neutron activation analysis data from the Missouri University Research Reactor and provided by Mike Plaskock. Now, ideally, you'd compare X-ray fluorescence artifact data with sources and source samples analyzed by that same instrument under the same conditions. But in cases where your instrument is calibrated to match the MER elemental results and you do not have source samples available or perhaps you don't have a full suite of the source samples, the data is available to you to compare with. So in this example, I'm going to be looking at sources from Peru. So I'll switch over to Peruvian city and sources and artifacts are from southern Peru. So I'll choose some of the sources in the region to compare with. If you'd like to see the different elements these are elements that are typically available from X-ray fluorescence. So you can change the elements along the axis there. And if you'd like to see the points that are used to construct these ellipses, they're available here under options. So in this example, I'm going to upload the X-ray fluorescence data that's provided in this example file link here. As you can see, there's a unique ID column. The first one, the second column is a grouping variable like site ID or source ID. And then the subsequent columns are elements. There are no spaces in the field. So I've downloaded this file to my desktop and I'm going to upload using this button. There it is. These are Peruvian artifact examples. So I've chosen artifact, the sample ID column. We have to tell the system what is in each column. So the sample ID is the first column. The source ID is the second column or the site ID in this case. And then the elements, let's use Rebedium, Strontium, Iterium, and Perconium or columns number 8, 9, 10, and 11. I'll choose those from the list. 7, 9, and 11. And I will show it in the plot. The sites are available, visible here. And they're differentiated by color. Now, sometimes it can be hard to tell the ellipse colors. But one way to determine which green is this ellipse in question is to click here in the legend and it will turn on and off. So that one looks like it's Sarah Ticlago. And this one is Chiwai. So let's assign these artifact samples to Chiwai. And we can click here on the rows and confirm that we're looking at Chiwai samples there. They're highlighted. And so I'll go ahead and type Chiwai in the notes column. And you can go ahead and download that table. So as I mentioned, it's best to analyze the sources with the same instrument, but these are available in case you're working outside your regular study area or you just don't have all the sources analyzed on that instrument yet. And your instrument is calibrated to match more results when possible. So next, I'd like to show you where this repository, we are using OpenContext repository here, opencontext.org. You can see they have a lot of data from North America in the form of the DNAC data set, a lot of East Mediterranean. In this case, we have our data set and Andy's is this dot and you can jump straight to the records or look at the cover page of the project. It loads up, it shows you all the names of the researchers over the years who have contributed data to Mer, samples to Mer for neutron activation analysis that are included here. Let's go look at the records. The map is shown here and we're going to use this as a geo browser to zoom in and select our study area. The sample artifact data today comes from Southern Peru, so I'll zoom into Southern Peru. I'm going to show the circle markers. And when we get in closer, I'm going to delimit using this tool, our study area to only consider sources in the region around the site. And as you can see, we're we're we've zoomed in and now it updates and we're looking at only 330 records instead of over a thousand. You can see these records down below here. We can click on one and see the full record all the chemistry provided. And we can download all of the three hundred and thirty three samples by clicking on this button. And there's all the elements that are going to be included. We can exclude some this way and you can export CVSV or do JSON with this button. Also wanted to mention that when we are using these data connected to a web app, the API supports copying the URL and pasting it into the web app. And right now they're undergoing some upgrades. So the API called isn't working, but that that's ultimately what would do is just zoom in, make sure the data records are updated, and then take the URL over to the analysis environment. So now I'm going to demonstrate the the Jupyter notebooks, which are these basically, as I'm sure here, this is Julia, Python and R in a available in this web browser interface. The this example notebook is an R notebook, but it runs from here from the Jupyter hub, which is hosted at UC Berkeley. But these notebooks, you'll see them more and more. They're becoming widely used and supported by Microsoft by Google. In Google, they're called the collab notebooks in Google Drive. And those are mostly Python, but they'll run R as well. And I mentioned Microsoft ArcGIS Pro has notebook support added on now. So they're running their Python. So we'll see them more and more. They're also really good for teaching because the students can just sign into this web page. They don't have to pre install things and the code is visible and the results are immediately shown below. So here we've run this first cell with the libraries, our libraries are going to be using today. And I'm just holding down shift and moving through this notebook. We've libraryed those packages. And now this is where we would put in the URL for that 330 source sample, the limited area on open contacts. But because right now the API won't support that, we're just going to pull it in from CSV. We can look at the data. This is the format. And then this next cell defines the size of the plots in line. And now we're going to plot rubidium against zirconium in this case using ggplot. Now one of the most useful ways to represent the source data is as two standard deviation ellipses. So instead of showing the actual points, let's show the data ellipses. Well, you can't show data ellipses when there's fewer than three points to use because ellipse around two points doesn't make a lot of sense. So we're going to filter it. Here we're going to add a count for each chemical group. And that's visible here on the end, the end column. And then we're going to create two data frames. One is the ones with fewer than three, three or fewer samples. And the other is called any ellipse has more than three. You can see them here. There's two data frames. And now we're going to plot the ellipses for the ones that are eligible for that. And next I'm going to use this JavaScript library called plotly to create a dynamic plot. So recall how in our shiny example you were able to move around and zoom in. Well, similarly here we can zoom in. We can turn on and off ellipses like so. And wouldn't it be nice to overlay our artifact data on this plot? Here we're going to pull in the artifact data from the CSE. We're going to add the chem group variable so that it overlays on this, has the same structure as the other data frame. So they're compatible. And now there they are overlaying on Gigi plot. And now I will load them in the plotly example. And you can see how these artifacts are around the Chi-Vai ellipse. And although we're seeing more variability in rubidium among the artifacts, so maybe there's more rubidium variability at Chi-Vai than we currently have in the Mer collection. So let's look at the artifact data. You can look at the top six rows. But this is sort of a static view. So I wanted to show you that there's other data table representations like data table here. And this one allows you to sort columns. You can slightly more dynamic in that way. Finally, I wanted to show you what a ternary plot looks like. This is also using plotly. This one is zoomable. So we can zoom in on these kind of tight clusters and pull them apart. And looking at ratios on the x and y-axis and by plots, it's as simple as adding a slash, you know, divide by in the code here. Like that. And then we're going to display it in plotly. There it is, rubidium over strontium. So that's a quick introduction to Jupyter notebooks using R. I was going to quickly show you over here, we have a Jupyter notebook with Python. And in this case, we've got a few graphical views of the data. So here's a Python map using folium. And so you can take the same data and represented in maps. And this is also possible in the R notebooks using libraries like leaflet. So in conclusion, I would like to point out that this is based on open software that can be attached to the websites, the repositories where the data is hosted. It can also be included in a container or basically the software, the libraries, the repository, all of the entire analytical environment can be containerized and archived. And someone 50 years from now would have access to all of the above in order to reconstruct your analytical environment completely. Secondly, I wanted to highlight that it needs following these principles of open data science, software like Excel, while it's good for exploring your data and showing it in JMP and kind of looking for patterns in your data initially, in terms of producing a workflow that you're moving samples through these instruments and generating a lot of data, you want to have a explicit workflow using the text-based statistical package like R and Python. And then of course, many of the commercial software like SAS also use text, they have a text terminal, but those are commercial, so you have licensing issues if you were to try to archive it with your repository. So we'll see more of these notebooks and classes and analytical workflows in the future, and I wanted to share them with the obsidian community here today. Finally, one of the key aspects of the open context repository is that it doesn't require that you're signed in beforehand. That is, it's possible for apps like the notebook and our shiny app to pull from that repository with no sign-in headaches, because that really restricts the accessibility by these sort of external visualization platforms. So when you're looking for repositories to host your data, consider that. That's one of the issues with TDRs that they require that you're signed in beforehand. Open context doesn't, e-scholarship does not. There are a number of them that don't require sign-in. They do generate metrics using other information, but they don't track it to the individual like the sign-in systems do. So finally, I would like to knowledge the generous data from Mer that have been sent by many NDNS collaborators over the years and the support of the Mellon Foundation for Digital Humanities grant that allowed us to begin archiving these data on open context and hiring the R Shiny developer. The Xseed platform was used for hosting our R Shiny project and finally our project in Jupyter Notebooks. Thank you. So yeah, I guess we're going to kind of change directions here and move to the Near East now. So the next presentation is entitled Obsidian in the Near East, New Challenges and Future Directions. This is by Elizabeth Healy, Stuart Campbell and Osama Maeda. So Elizabeth, please take it away. It's Stuart that's presenting. I got the short straw. Both Elizabeth and Osama are here and they've got their cameras on. So you should watch their faces as I'm presenting and watch for them to twitch when I say things they disagree with. I want to do a fairly broad overview and talk on a number of different topics. They're not really topics that I want to or we want to set out as an agenda for Obsidian in the Near East as a whole. I must admit this is very much a lab-specific direction. These are some of the things that I've come up in recent work, some of the issues that we can see going forward. Nicely, I should have started by thanking the organisers, but nicely a lot of this stuff has already come up and been referred to one way or other in earlier papers over the last couple of days. So in many respects I'll be rehearsing fairly familiar arguments within a broader context. But the first thing I really wanted to place this in the context of is that Near Eastern archaeology had a very early engagement with sourcing of archaeological obsidian with the work of Renfrew Dixon and Cannes, particularly in the 1960s. And then for a long period it was sort of trickling along where there was work continuing, particularly by the time of the seminal volume on the Obsidian of the Near East edited by Mayakler Kovang amongst others that was published in 1998. By then the sources were pretty well known, a lot of the broad patterns of Obsidian use at least during earlier prehistory, not so much in later prehistory, were well known. The actual accumulation of samples had been relatively slow, so most sites we were looking at a handful of artifacts that could pick out really broad patterns but not the details of what were going on within archaeological periods and regions, individual sites and so on. And that's changed very rapidly with an initial kick in the mid-2000s with much larger numbers of samples suddenly started being produced and then particularly an explosion of results from 2013-2014 where particularly that most recent explosion in the number of results has come from the use as elsewhere of portable XRF instruments including the sort of stuff that we've been doing in Manchester from about that sort of point. But it is, if you start looking where that's going in the near future, we're going to see a really rapid increase in the density of samples, number of samples, number of sites. Essentially the point of that graph is that sample size, number of artifacts that have been assigned to source are increasing very, very rapidly and that's going along with an increase in the number of people who are doing it, both in terms of more formally established labs and also in terms of people who have access to portable XRF machines and who are developing their own analytical program. Again that's been referred to in previous presentations and in many respects the nearest isn't different from other parts of the world but I think it's probably actually starting from a point where there isn't quite the quantity of material that's already been published. So we've got quite a lot we can learn by looking at how developments have occurred elsewhere. If you look at that on the map, this is a very inadequate map. The blue dots are an emerging geographical data set but they're only remotely adequate for Mesopotamia in the Levant. As you move out from Mesopotamia in the Levant there are lots of sites with analysed material that we haven't listed there and the Manchester contribution within that is a growing amount of both source and artificial analysis. So both published and material that in some ways in a point blind towards publication we're now looking at about seven and a half thousand artifacts or a little bit more. We've actually tried to bias what we've been doing mainly to be looking at really large sample sets from indigenous sites so we can investigate the more specific more detailed aspects of obsidian utilisation and in reference to Matt's earlier paper perhaps it's maybe worth mentioning one of the reasons that we've got material from over a hundred sites is we've actually been reanalyzing quite a lot of the original Renfrew Dixon and Canon material which is still in an archive and as part of that we've also been scanning and digitising quite a lot of that Renfrew archive. It's been on pause for quite a long time now because it's not been possible to work on that material during COVID but hopefully we can pick up on that again in the future and that sort of increasing scale of data is demanding different approaches to how we go about integrating that material or analysing that material things that are pushing beyond the classic report for which there's still a very strong role of course but the classic report of taking an assemblage of obsidian from a particular site assigning it to source and making that the core of a publication. So there's been the usual sort of range of approaches that you might expect and one or two more innovative ones as well looking at things like network models, rootway analysis, looking at comparisons between different groups of assemblages and several of the people who are attending here have been closely tied up in some of these explorations of new tools to integrate and to develop new understandings of obsidian provenance data. In terms of sources we've been in the situation for quite a long time now where most of the sources are known in general terms. Our knowledge of subsources is gradually improving with relatively recent improvements particularly the major sources of Gallaudat in South Central Turkey and Nemrutat in Eastern Turkey but there are other areas where we still lack a lot of information both about subsources in particular locations but very often where the form in which those sources would have been accessed by people in the past so if you look at Northeastern Anatolia for instance there may well have been quite a lot of accessing of material that's been washed along rivers which essentially means that the river in one sense is a source of material but its sources have actually come from a number of different geologically distinctive sources. Renfrew's group 3D obsidian source still unlocated. I was very pleased to see a mention of it in the Kurtiktepe presentation yesterday but it is something where we've been doing quite a lot of work on that where if I remember the figures correctly there were known to be about 30 odd artifacts from the 3D source that I focusing particularly on later prehistory so from the period from about 7,000 BC onwards we've actually been able to add from memory about 350 more examples. It's never a dominant source but it is a source that becomes very very regularly employed in later periods. Things worth mentioning there are odd other unknown sources that occasionally crop up in archaeological material and there are certainly issues around some of the smaller sources where they're not quite as well defined as we might expect and in that context I think particularly for people who are coming to obsidian source analysis for the first time in the Near East there are major challenges around maintaining a full reference set and relating your material to the full reference set and I think that's one of the challenges that we certainly encountered when we were starting out on this five or six years ago I think we've largely overcome that and as the earlier slide said we're now working on a source reference set of more than 1500 geological samples but I think it is going to be challenging how other people can make use of that sort of material. The subsources I think are becoming particularly interesting and perhaps particularly with the example of Gallaudet East where there are several subsources that are exploited at different times. There are various ways that you can go about starting to subdivide this and the diagram here is more through visual interest it doesn't actually represent our subsource assignment process which we're doing through five or six elements ratioed to geometric mean but regularly you can distinguish the Gallaudet five subsource. We're finding that there's quite a lot of overlap particularly between Gallaudet four and Gallaudet seven that make it a little bit harder to pull out but once you start looking at regional patterns around that you start to get things that suggest there's some quite complex and interesting things going on. So this is just looking at what's happening with distribution of Gallaudet East subsources down the Levant where at some sites you've got a domination of the Gallaudet five subsource but at other sites you've got other sources being used rather more commonly. Some of these may make a little bit of geographic sense so sites to the west and south of Gallaudet East are perhaps using more of the non-Gallaudet five which is on the northeast end of the Gallaudet mountain range so there may be something to do with geographic access going on but there are a series of sites in the Rouge basin you can see in red in the middle of the the bar graphs where they're not using nearly as much Gallaudet five and I think we're looking at quite complex distribution and access routes that to be honest we don't really understand at the moment but I think there are going to be some very interesting things going on as these subsource patterns are better understood. One of the broad things that it's clear is happening within the Middle East is that through time you get a greater diversity of sources that sites are utilizing at Sidian from a wider range of sources even if the bulk of the Sidian is still coming from a quite restricted number of major sources and this is just an effort to plot that out using different ways of measuring diversity. Obviously one of the big problems you've got is particularly for minority sources if you only sample a small number of artefacts from a particular site you're not going to be picking up the minority sources so that when we've been looking at bigger samples from individual sites somewhere like Umba Dabagia where from memory we analyzed maybe 700 artefacts we actually picked up the last extra source somewhere around the 550th artefact so there are various ways of measuring diversity that try and account for these missing minority elements. It varies a little bit between Mesopotamia and Levant but broadly speaking somewhere in the mid 7th millennium BC somewhere between 7000 and 6000 BC you tend to get this kick of a much more diverse range of sources starting to come into play. We can see that very clearly if we look at a broad diacronic perspective of the change in obsidian use in Levant and this is a fairly selected set of sites but you can see at the sites that predate about 6500 they're predominantly the pinks of the Cappadocian sources and there afterwards you go into this rather wonderful multicoloured phase where you're starting to see sites utilising a very much wider range of material including some that still seem slightly counter-intuitive so the regular appearance at sites like Domestepi of quantities of obsidian from Armenia when the routeways to access that would have probably run fairly close to the much bigger suppliers of sources like bingo in eastern Anatolia. So at Domestepi itself you've got this huge diversity of sources not just the three big sources Gullida east over here and the bingo sources at other sites Nemmut's other major supplier that we tend to see but you've also got lots of obsidian coming from northeast Anatolia where it's really quite confusing as to why that is coming in quite significant quantities and our estimate is that about up to about four percent of this image may be coming from those sorts of directions and it's looking as though possibly in the region of Domestepi if not the site itself other sites in that general region you've perhaps have got that process of mixing of supply happening that then extends down the Levant because at that period around about 6000 or the first half of the sixth millennium you also find a lot of the sites further down the Levant have also got a similar diverse set of resources starting to appear so I think there are a lot of issues in terms of coming to terms with why the choices are being made what minority sources represent and how those supply routes are actually operating where it's really only the increasing quantity of data that we've got that's allowing us to understand those sorts of patterns but there's also important patterns that only emerge within individual sites once you start looking at larger assemblages that allow you to have a more contextual understanding of what's going on this is a site Ken and Tepe that dates to the early fifth millennium it's actually very very close to Partick Tepe that you were hearing about earlier during the conference but it's several thousand years later it's down on the Euphrates river there are two sets of trenches where material from the big period from between about 47 and 46,500 BC were found and those are trenches E and trench D trench D is fairly well known there's a rather nice burnt building and we know it was part of a whole sequence of buildings that were reconstructions of each other so there's probably three perhaps four phases of construction going on there where I think we can possibly talk about a single household existing over several generations occupying a building that undergoes a variety of modifications trench D overlaps that but only has only been excavated in the latter part of that phase but bearing in mind that they're very close together the fact that when we look at the totality of the obsidian's come from those trenches we get some quite interesting patterns of going going on this I would say is not just based on geochemical analysis although we've analyzed over 800 pieces of obsidian from Ken and Tepe with a degree of inevitability the way these were originally selected only about 150 of them actually come from the the phases that we need to understand the household use of obsidian in these two trenches so we've been forced to use visual characterization as well which is why Nemrutdan and Bengali are shown combined together in fact we do know that the vast majority of this parochline obsidian is almost certainly from Nemrutdan. In trench D consistently during the phases of this these series of households were building structures in trench D you're consistently looking at a parochline dominated assemblage an assemblage that's largely dominated by material from Nemrutdan in the neighboring trench E that overlaps the latter stages instead it's being dominated by this group D obsidian coming from an unknown source that's probably somewhere not too far away from Ken and Tepe itself in between somewhere in the Nemrutdan bingo ridge that starts to get very interesting once you start to think about that in terms of acquisition patterns that it looks to us as though the two households are moving in different directions that in trench D trench D household is particularly exploiting obsidian from Nemrutdan perhaps by direct access perhaps as part of seasonal and transhumans patterns perhaps through intermediaries and by this time period nomadic transhuman groups are very possibly starts to become interesting once you start to look at traditional migrant patterns in the area which are surprisingly well documented from studies that were carried out during the 20th century which suggests that there are patterns that particular tribal migration routes took people up towards bingo other tribal migration patterns took people up towards Nemrutda but some of them branched off and headed in the moose direction and I wonder if that's going to be the sort of area that we end up discovering that 3d was present but I think we're not just seeing a difference between households but we're looking at the way in which households then map on to movement through landscape and other types of subsistence patterns in the surrounding area it's worth saying that the group D stuff also seems to be being brought back and we've got the full reduction sequence going on at Kenan all the Nemrutz material for instance seems to be coming back more in terms of paired cores or perhaps blades so there are other differences going on there as well that's intentionally not an attempt to give a large scale coherent overview I did want to indicate that I think in many respects for obsidian studies in the Near East this is a very exciting time we've not only seen a vast increase in the amount of data that we're dealing with but that's going to continue over the next few years where we're going to see an explosion possibly an exponential explosion in the terms of quantity of data that we've got to deal with although that is going to pose challenges in terms of non-traditional laboratories and analysts who are contributing to those data sets and we're certainly going to need to pay more attention to archaeological context as well as considering more traditional technomorphological analysis where in a sense obsidian studies and obsidian sourcing isn't a sub-study in itself but it's part of the mainstream lithic analysis which it hasn't tended to be within the Near East certainly comprehensive provenancing will give more balanced picture we should get this much better idea of use of subsorces not just the main sources themselves but I think we've got lots of challenges in terms of how we support this in a collaborative way perhaps particularly around access to samples but particularly comparison between laboratories and ways of infighting individuals who've got time got access to the XRF machine but supporting them in carrying out high quality and comparable data collection because that is the reality that is the opportunity that's going to be there and it would be against all our interests to try and stop it I think the solutions that are certainly amongst the ones that we're wrestling with at the moment are going to be towards moving to much more open data and source sharing the previous paper was very obviously opening up a lot of that sort of discussion um we've very recently just started a repository using fig share really to try and get something up and running but I think we're going to have to rethink the whole way in which we go about publication and as Nico was saying how we deal with the small data sets that aren't necessarily going to support top quality exciting articles but are still going to be valuable data sets and how we make them available in ways that can be credited ways it can be referenced without holding them up as we wait for the final gold standard sort of publication to take place and ultimately I think we need to place this firmly back into an archaeological context that we're really ultimately interested in the interpretation and how we use this to understand the past I'll leave it leave it there I do want briefly reference the fact that we've got a web address that I'm inordinately proud of um we will be making more material available in fig share there's nothing terribly exciting there at the moment but we will be thinking about how we're going to develop that in future so thank you for listening um thank all sorts of people who've contributed to our project previously but I'll leave it there thank you wonderful thank you so much Stuart so uh we've not heard from our next presenter uh so we have some uh free time here uh so we have some time for questions for for Stuart and uh for any questions we might have for Nico as well yes I have one question I'm Akira Ono I want to make myself clear what's the thank you very much for your presentation what's the substantial difference between source and sub source particularly and as a terminology for the sub source I think it's in in many ways I I probably put more reasonably throw that out to several people who are much better qualified than I am to answer it I must admit we tend to use it in a rather informal sense and where it's more tied into the traditional momenclature so Gallaudet has been since the work of Renfrew Dixon and Cannon has been acknowledged as one of the major source areas um there are various ways of subdividing it that relate to episodes of volcanic activity in particular flows many of which are now better understood but I think where perhaps particularly on the ones in the southern part of Gallaudet I'm certainly not entirely clear exactly the the sequence of deposition in other cases the name that should be used for the source which is the name that I'm tending to refer to sources by is the nearest modern place name and there are still areas where there hasn't been the detailed geological work that's been done to disentangle the exact sequence of deposition and eruption of of the obsidians um so to be honest I don't know I'm you I'm using it loosely there are going to be much more rigorous ways of making use of it and I think over time we ought to think about how we regularize that and how we standardize terminology yes I I need maybe much more discussion between archaeologists geologists absolutely yeah no I mean basically the way we're using it is a bit of a mess and I do apologize for that okay thank you no that's a really great point and I've noticed global differences in some people use terminology sources subsources or groups and and I think it's kind of a central question of whether the geology is defining the sources or does the geochemistry define the sources and I think it's kind of a central question that's worth addressing yeah can I ask you a quick question I'm just wondering can you tell me the absolute date range so in general in in the nearest where the use of obsidian gets in the peak so starts to the peak and it stays there and then going down so what is the range I mean in general picture let's say not of course not really detailed but I mean what what what you see for your x I mean with your experience yeah and to some extent it's got regional variations so certainly areas that are closer to the source is obsidian gets used as a standard chipstone material and it declines largely either when the chipstone declines or certainly there are places in Turkey where chipstone has been used fairly recently for threshing sleds which I think are mainly using chart because of the tougher where that you can subject it to in a lot of places you the peak probably starts somewhere in the latter part of the eighth millennium I mean it's certainly you get very regular and extensive obsidian use before that but in terms of the most common appearance when it starts to make up the biggest percentage of obsidian and that persists until maybe the middle of the sixth millennium in some places but one of the things that we've been finding that was a bit of a surprise is that most of the work traditionally on obsidian in the Near East has tended to be on the earlier part of prehistory and it's not just that we've been discovering that the 3d obsidian has got a much more extensive use than we'd ever expected but you've got obsidian use partly for things like beats and prestige material in southern Mesopotamia right the way into the second millennium but there's a second millennium site right down in the southern Mesopotamia where we've got a little classic little blade of obsidian dating to about 1500 BC so it's certainly not unheard of even for quite utilitarian purposes for a very long period I don't know this is the sort of thing where I expect Elizabeth will might might want to give more detail or not I trust you that's very unwise but of course the blade might be something symbolic we haven't really addressed that yeah no that's certainly true but for Muir for instance where they're very often unstratified but they're typically B3rd or 2nd millennium there are quite a number of obsidian beads but there are also more apparently utilitarian items as well so there is a very long tail in terms of obsidian use and I mean Allery's published that article fairly recently on obsidian found at Europa in roughly Roman period thank you very much yeah and also thank you for your presentation it's very inspiring and amazing thank you I think it's very interesting that people are thinking along the same channels of making data available and I think that's very important thing to come out of the talks today yeah I think many of the many of the points that have been made earlier in terms of comparability and use of standards to both as a secondary calibration and as a reference to material is absolutely critical I think you win with the with the web domain there was that Manchester obsidian box I was I must admit not not all of my cold researchers have quite the same feelings about it I was so excited about it I don't like it the main name which obviously was not set up for geology set up for entertainment industry but I was so excited about it anyone who wants to copy it and also have something obsidian rocks it's very welcome I think I think you might I'd have to discuss it at the IOS meeting maybe there's a case for mass takeover it may not have been intended as a geological domain name but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use it as one any other questions or comments so uh yes Tristan sorry can you hear me yes okay thank you um now it was a terrific presentation and I very much want to um yeah I'm on board with all of those things and I think it's incredibly important uh the the return of the archaeological ascetic store of this and to treat our material as archaeological artifacts and not samples I think you know we we now have this incredible computational power and the recent turn to sort of social network analyses etc by even air set al and my old student Zachary Baptiste they are all hampered by the reductionist attitude we have towards our material all we're ever talking about in those models is raw material as opposed to how people are using it and it's quite apparent that at the same time in different places people are using exactly the same raw materials in very different ways and we're losing all of that nuance with these representations so you know the the clear reportage of what your artifact is stop calling them samples call them artifacts that's what we need to do yeah yeah absolutely I think there's a slight almost ghettoization where as obsidian sourcing has kicked ahead it's although it's not the intention of anybody it's actually taken it to a special place where people do obsidian sourcing and it's sometimes taken it out of out of the regular domain of the people working on the chipstone material from some of the sites oh absolutely and and of course there is a very important space for that in terms of the initial definition of sources their discrimination etc but um certainly yeah I mean moving forward I think obviously this isn't you know this is a comment of global pertinence here in terms of you know a return a reintegration you know with with our archaeological questions yep this is great so uh we're now kind of moving into the the lunch session here so we have a couple more presentations left and we're going to start off with a presentation by kata Zalagi the title of the presentation is depositional pattern of obsidian artifacts understanding the diverse value concepts in the neolithic carpathian basin so kata please take it away thank you very much and first of all I would like to thank for the conference organizers to be here um yeah uh hopefully my screen is visible right yes yeah perfect yeah um in the beginning I would like to um sorry one moment yeah so in the beginning I would like to um just mention the main objective is what I would like to talk um examine the exchange network in the in the neolithic carpathian basin where the obsidian was one of the most important materials I also would like to de-emphasize the economic angle of the obsidian and look more closely at the archaeological context and examine the depositional pattern of obsidian um first uh just look this picture uh we can see here the most prominent fine categories of the carpathian basin uh neolithic period uh we can see pottery uh polystone axes chipstone goes and very prominent uh the obsidian we are talking about we are talking about the first farmers in the carpathian basin uh in the the neolithic time which means an absolute date uh 6000 uh from 6000 to 4500 BC and um yesterday uh Clive Bonsal mentioned uh this kind of greet Hungarian plain and the carpathian basin uh geographical uh unit uh tricky situation that's why I would like to use during the whole presentation this little um map which helps to understand better what kind of region what I'm I will talk about um and in this uh relative chronological chart we can also see this kind of distinction between Transnubian and Great Hungarian plan and um in the map the red means the Transnubian part and the Great Hungarian plan uh we can see uh with the blue one and this is what Clive Bonsal mentioned that uh the southern part is actually Voivodina Serbia so may might be would might be better to call for example Great Pannonian plain but that exactly means that when I'm talking about Great Pannonian plain I also uh mean in Voivodina and Serbian part and the third geographical unit in the carpathian basin is a yellow one which is Transylvania or Hungarian language Erde which is Romanian territory but today I'm going to talk about in this uh part um so the priestly exchange networks um we talk about lithics and jewelry and in the lithics of course the obsidian is highly important and the different kind of flints in a carpathian basin context um the northern flint varieties are really important that consists of Craco juristic flint, Volhynian flint, chocolate flint and in the polystone axes the jade are super important and the jewelry the spondylus, the lapis lazuli, amber and the copper is um yes also important in the carpathian basin and I would like to summarize in three um bigger overarching questions what I would like to um um talking about uh how is the obsidian related to other materials in the exchange network a second one is do the depositional pattern of obsidian vary in relation to the distance from the source and the third one is can we see differences between the use in domestic burial and ritual context um first um this exchange networks in the now lithics related to the obsidian spondylus and copper and I would like to also mention the elaborate pottery uh why so important and related to the obsidian um first the obsidian distribution of obsidian uh Katalinti Biro yesterday um explained to us uh the details and really the state of art and the research history of the carpathian obsidian uh the c1, c2 and c3 I just would like to refer her um really interesting good presentation in the left map we can see the chemical measurement the those obsidian finds which are confirmed by chemical measurement and the right map it shows the distribution of the carpathian obsidian by different kind of archaeological period and we heard yesterday that from the polyolithic to the iron age and also younger periods are prominent but mostly how Katalint also said yesterday that the middle and late analysis is the peak the epoch of the obsidian and the second uh network is uh the spondylus that's why I would like to use Arne Windler map um in a 2019 publication what I a little bit modified to emphasize better the archaeological context of the obsidian the green part shows the obsidian finds which appeared from settlement context of course it's not really surprising that close to the Mediterranean the coastline is the those regions where it's concentrated in the settlement context and if you are going to the north and further to the continental part of Europe we can see that this archaeological context is definitely changed and the spondylus and spondylus ornaments and jewellery deposited in graves and some hoards and it's very interesting to see these two regions where overlapping each other this is the Carpathian Basin and Romanian and Bulgarian territories and if we look at closer in the Carpathian Basin we can see that definitely we are talking about the Tisza river I hope it's visible my cursor and what I show the Tisza river and it's also interesting that the middle and late analysis what I try to emphasize from the obsidian perspective in the whole presentation so the spondylus network concentrated along the Tisza river and beside the Danube one accumulation is visible which is actually in the late Nalutic time the Lengyel culture grapes which is also here located five or six settlements which is really high number of barriers but it's also so this is the reason why we can see there this accumulation and if you're talking about the copper and the distribution of copper it's not so obvious the network road but the reason is because the copper appeared in the late Nalutic in a very sporadic way from the burials and we can see again this Lengyel burial accumulation and also some bigger dots beside the Tisza and the sub river of the Tisza and one is important the pottery and the distribution of book pottery the book culture in the Carpathian Basin in the relative chronological chart as the middle Nalutic dated in the middle Nalutic and if we see here in a little map this is exactly what in the last in the last few presentation we hear that the Hungarian and Slovakian parts of the Tokai hyperionic mountain were concentrated the obsidian geological source and this is definitely the core area of the book culture we can see here this really beautiful highly decorated fine there with some big culture so we are when we are talking about the big pottery import this is what we are talking about and it's very interesting because before we are talking about distant network exchange networks and now we are talking about some local things because I mean that this is the first time in the Carpathian Basin where pottery was an item which was important and kind of item of an exchange that was never before so that's why the point is that now we have to talk about what is the value how a local raw material a local production became a valuable exchangeable item and what kind of values are necessary to became or transform an item or raw material important for the other person another community so the value is a subjective concept which is determined by social interaction in real life context and that's variable and culture specific nevertheless it is crucial to have an idea of how and in what ways and what kind of values and value systems govern for historic societies there is a large amount of philosophical anthropological and economical literature of the value concept from all of them I would like to emphasize the marvelous American anthropologist David Graber work which is published in 2001 where he separated and this is what I would like to use three dimensions of value which are determined by their involvement in different interconnected spheres of human experience and which are archaeologically detectable economical social and ritual values I try to help in the further part of their presentation with these colors on the left side of the slide the economic value the total sum of the amount of work energy investment the skills put into the procurement and production of things might be detected using the following archaeological parameters the distance between the item and its original raw material source the ratio between the raw materials quantity and the source distance netable and usable qualities the type or feature of a raw material procurement and finally the completely complexity of the technological production process of an item in the last three days and actually we are talking about the economical value of obsidian mostly we have a lot of really fantastic information data data set in the different part of the word and that was really marvelous to listen to this so huge information the last some days let's say let's see the social value the ways and which things are integrated into social relations the role play they play in interactions between and within communities the parameters are the origin from the different or distant cultural context the outstanding grace and depositions the degree of specialization of technological process and the deposition context the ritual value is actually the role items play in ritual practices most visible architecturally in burials and depots parameters are the presence and frequency of the item in ritual depositions the integration into patterns and integration into sex I would like to use many examples from the lbk and also the land yell and these are cultures which is the middle and late now lytic because this is the epoch of the obsidian and let's see what we can see any traces from the obsidian perspective in a domestic burial and ritual context I would like to start with the domestic context and I also would like to use a really interesting example from the biggest lbk size in Europe it's in Radle in Slovakia which is another part of the Carpathian basin and I just pick up one example and from I mean that one house and we can we can see that the local seamlessly limited and the obsidian are the dominant raw materials and if we see the left side of the slide the item takes place nothing really special nothing very specific repatching technique or something else so it's totally normal tools set from the settlement also the lbk that in the Hungarian part but also close to the modern part of the Carpathian basin in Europe and Karan Shag I would like to use an example if you see the raw material distribution the situation is the same the obsidian and the local limnokwati or the limnosilitis are the dominant one but it's also interesting to see that actually the whole tool making procedure happens inside the settlement from the beginning there are so many decorative plates in the settlement material so that means that actually the whole tool making procedure started from the obsidian nozzle form also domestic domestic context in Karan Shag site which is the late nullitic part for the Lendya culture totally the same the raw material distribution but the interesting things if we see the same community the Lendya community but further from the obsidian geological source allocated in the southern part of Transnubia and it's definitely changed the whole raw material concept which is the most important the most important is the local matchek radial right and I help you here is the obsidian which is three percent of the whole site from Ashwanyek Patosik and the other Lendya materials which is published by Kotelin Tiibiru it's also very low very low amounts of obsidian and what I would like to also emphasize the importance of the river so what we saw before that the Spongilus and copper is highly related to the Tissa river oops sorry the Tissa river I also would like to use the same time period middle late nullitic but focused on the Tissa what's going on beside the Tissa winter culture and Tissa culture I help here with the little map and it's very interesting to see for example the map of of from the marriage publication from 2016 he emphasized that actually the C1 type of obsidian the Carpacian one is distributed along the Tissa river and actually all the same year Marina Milic was the person who who did the PhD in the UC Aldi University 2016 and she also emphasized that actually this Serbian part and the lower than Europe is really interesting because probably this is the southern part of the Carpacian basin distribution and in these communities the obsidian was important material around 30 percent everywhere the amount of obsidian in Boryash and the Russia side Poporin Kremlin Popsovanske, Gradice, Vrysk and Opowo also and we are just talking about C1 if you see the burial context and the LBK also Vrabla all in all 19 burials uncovered and Vrabla and seven burials have grave goods and two of them contain obsidian a flake and also a blade and also the burial context and we are talking about not just now an economical value I have to emphasize this social and the ritual value of these obsidian items. Tissa culture it's close to the Tissa river, late Nalitex, Polgacius, Hologonside only one blade fragment known from the site and also in the Polgar micro region it's really interesting and we know one example from Polgar Ferencihat the raw material published by Magorzata Kaczynovsk and Janusz Kuzlowski in 2016 the raw material distribution same obsidian local lima question but it's a really huge obsidian blade core appeared in the burial and this is actually this kind of logical language jump in the next value appearance this kind of ritual value and also the depot and special deposition context if you are talking about archeological context the obsidian depot from the early early Nalitex a new site appeared in Wamprod where we can see here published Anna Priskin these are obsidian nodules the were known nielogosch obsidian blade depot from the middle Nalitex so it's also related to the good culture which is C1 and Slovakia we also know Kasshoff-Cephegos site also C1 obsidian blade unfortunately the biggest part of the here in the drawings these cores appeared these are spray fines and this big one which published Pierre Allert in 2017 this is actually appeared by accident so that was a rescue excavation we don't know so much about this archeological concept but also the special deposition and again ritual and and the social value what we are talking about again Vrabla so the LBK period a house and especially one post hole where deposited in a very very specific situation a blade core also C1 so it's definitely something which is not just someone I don't know lost a blade that's especially deposited in this post hole that was the goal of this activity and we see the same in the late Nalitex context polgatius holon this is a piece of pellet and horizontal settlement and here also an obsidian core was deposited in a post hole in the horizontal part of the settlement but if we are thinking about the ritual value we have to combine the obsidian depots with the other lytic deposition that these are follow the same pattern or the obsidian maybe do something similar these do something totally different and there is a special pattern so just look at shortly from the early med early now let's take android side we can see which is published by paolo bg and elzabeta star mini 100 balkan flake deposited in a vessel middle now let's take again big culture poldo kivarejo 6000 blades local in the question place deposited in a really huge vessel and this is the same beside beside the tea server in the late Nalitex vagratius kivak side in a vessel deposited sanga radiolite which means balkan mountain and transnubian 33 pieces of plates so from that perspective that's really interesting what happened with the obsidian blade depots and this is the time when I also would like to come make some conclusion about the values what we can see first the economic value of obsidian if you remember the land yel period example we have to say that's not outstanding in every case the obsidian it's replaceable further from the obsidian geological source this material was not the most important anymore the social value is actually if you see the obsidian appearance we can see that no really not any connection with high status burials probably the Nalitex communities try to keep in a living for a living communities the obsidian because that was a very interesting and very important part of between the communities it was an exchangeable item and this is actually to have it to be able to keep the interest between communities and the third the ritual value actually we can see that the obsidian treat differently than the other late materials we see the distinct pattern of the deposition that which is totally different from other raw materials and this is a clear pattern the core and the deposition it's definitely a clear pattern which is this reveals that there are different value systems according to which obsidian could be understood and that's why it's I wanted to emphasize that these value systems are diverse multi-dimensional one item and one draw material could have had different kinds of value at the same time the current value of an item is related to the depositional means archaeological context and to understand the diverse value concepts we need to study and pay attention to the different depositional pattern thank you for your kind attention well thank you kata maybe we'll just have time for a quick question all right well why don't we why don't we move on here to our next presentation like it's the final oral presentation it's entitled obsidian sourcing and the study of island colonization by tristan carter three which is going to be in japan and they've got a wonderful program prepared for everyone so uh dr ono please take it take it away thank you kai then i'll make the short information about next conference well good morning good afternoon good evening dear colleague i'm akila ono uh scientific committee member of the international obsidian conference and the local organizing committee member of ioc angle 2023 first of all first of all i would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all the participants of this conference and in particular for the local organizing committee member of valkyrie conference kyle niko and lucas thank you very much indeed in these three days i've joined and and see the presentation not exactly but nearly 40 presentations including poster session and there i found a great variety of geological analytical and archaeological topics and these extensive and intensive and extensive researchers are representing new horizons of obsidian studies from all over the world and then we would like to succeed and proceed these fruitful results to the next conference namely ioc angle 2023 and kiai has pre-recorded the video presentation message of mr sasaki switch sasaki the mayor of engaltown so i would like to share his message first and after that i put just some information mr that mayor sasaki speaks his message in japanese and you see the english translation under the screen and here we go makoto ni mayo ni zonjimasu nihon no hokkaido nichi su rengal chouni wa nihon koku nai de saidai no koku yoseki san chi akai shiyama to kouki kyuseki jidai no seki seisakui seki shirataki seki gun ga arimasu akai shiyama de wa ima kara 220 mannei mai ni chi kyou ni nagare de tamaguma ga hiya sarete koku yoseki ga tanjou shimashita chokkei 5 kilometer no kaldera chi kei nai ni jukka shomo no koku yoseki yoga ga kakuni isarete imasu kono akai shiyama no fumoto nagare yuubetsugawa no kagandan kyuujou ni wa shirataki iseki gun to yamareru kyu jukka shomo no kyu seki jidai no iseki ga shuchu shimasu kousoku douro no kensetsu ni tomano haksu chousa de ni juu i seki 14 manhei 4 meter kara 760 man ten soju ryo juu san to mono shiro ga shizudo shimashita kore la wa seki seisaku gizutsu no fukugen ya koku yoseki san chi no keru jindui no katsudou shiru juu yo na shiro daru to iemasu enzai engaru chou de wa chi shizugaku koukogaku no kenkyu seika o kyouiku ya kankou ni katsuyo suru tame no program de aru jiyo park ni tori kundei imasu engaru chou no shizuen no kankyou wa sekai no koku yoseki kenkyu no shin choku ni kouken dekiru to kakushin suru no mi narasu chi shizu no shigen ya koukou i san no hogo to kanri ue ni mo kouken dekiru to kakushin suru mono de arimasu watakushi wa engaru chou chou to shite kaimi no ue o kanou na kagiri sappouto suru koto o oyakusoku shimasu 2023年 ni sekaijuu no minasama to engaru chou de oaidekiru koto o rengan shite orimasu thank you very much mr sasaki kenkyu so we are planning to hold our next conference maybe beginning of july 2023 this is the best season because for even in the beginning of july june sometimes there are still snow around the engaltown area and much ice and snow and obsidian outcrop area that's why the beginning of july is the best and we we can sure to make good course of excursion course or excursion courses around shiratake ocidian very big outcrop area and so and we we sure to make the first conference flyer maybe prepare this september and first circular will be prepared maybe next end of next march or april and so lastly their colleague and friends lastly i do hope that we would like to see you again in engaltown in 2023 and hopefully not by virtual conference but face to face thank you very much wonderful thank you dr ono this really looks like an amazing program and i'm really excited to these wonderful sources and and take part so so thank you for putting that together and i'm excited as i'm sure many of you are thank you thank you so uh on the schedule here we have our poster session uh we're we're going to go in and going to come back at 3 30 for closing announcements we're going to announce our poster winners uh the sas and iaos poster winners uh we'll also talk about uh future publication of the proceedings of this conference and and closing announcements so uh be sure to go visit some of the posters in the in the designated poster rooms and we'll be back at 3 30 so thank you Taylor student poster award which acknowledges innovative student contributions to archaeological research through the use of scientific methods the award is uh is named in honor of the late emeritus professor emeritus r ervin taylor of the university of california riverside for his outstanding contributions in the development and application of radio and carbon dating and archaeological research and his many contributions to the society for archaeological sciences uh the the award itself comes with a hundred dollar reward award and a complimentary year-long sas membership and a subscription to the sas bulletin and uh this year's uh winner is benjamin smith for his paper uh entitled imports and outcrops characterizing the band to obsidian quarry willow tie ethiopia using pxrf so congratulations ben and ben is here so uh i'll be in contact with you ben and uh and we'll work out the details and the checks in the mail check is in the pay now check is doesn't the next question no thank you very much that was a great poster yeah we're really excited to have the the posters the poster awards here um this is the first time we're we're giving out the craig skinner award in honor of his uh of his um long multi decade contribution to obsidian studies and uh we're going to be uh advocating that that poster award move forward at various venues various conferences including the 2023 ioc conference that's great well thanks lucas i i tend to be around for less more of those research years we're really happy to have your contribution um we we lean on on your research a lot uh in california and and great basin archaeology as you know i'm glad to hear okay so just a few items um before we have a post conference cocktail virtually if if you are interested in staying on a little longer uh we wanted to to note that um as many of you probably know the program that was accessible to everybody that may have had a few typos uh may have had some authors that weren't listed or listed in the wrong order we're going to make some corrections to the final program so it is posted and represent what actually occurred and some and correct some of the the issues videos will also be archived on the our projects page and the ias page um in the coming weeks uh nico and i and kyle are going to spend some time and edit that video down um to make it as as clean as possible there were a few papers that were not uh that were not recorded for their request and i wanted to extend that to all of you that if you choose to not have your paper as part of the recording just send us a quick request and we can simply edit it out if you if you choose to not be part of the video we um the posters are really only exist in that pdf that was sent out we aren't going to post them anywhere else but we do encourage the poster presenters to um to contribute to the iaos bulletin many of those posters would make nice reports or short essays which the bulletin is a really good venue for those kinds of publications especially ones that are in progress here um some of those posters may end up being full length articles uh in in the our proceedings so we will um we can discuss that too um so with that we we are going to send out um at least one to potentially few post conference emails with links to things news about what's going to happen after the conference including the plan for uh the proceedings to be published through uc berkeley through the archaeological research facility um so please keep your your um uh your eyes and ears out for those emails the obsidian 2021 at gmail email will be active for for many months so we will still receive emails through there and i'll be checking those um daily if not weekly if you have any post conference questions um and with that i really look forward to seeing everybody in japan and um please feel free to stay on for a post conference cocktail or a beer or just a casual chat if you like yes but thank you everybody thank you all thank you thanks a lot thank you thank you well done guys and i'll stop the recording while we have a cocktail that's a good idea