>Even if the daric contains some unusual trace elements, how sure can
>we be that some other deposit cannot also show up with these elements?
>If not, another scenario might be that one of the Greek potters
>grabbed an object that was made from melted darics to finance the trip
>to Italy.
What a lot of people tend to forget, is that chemical analyses, lead
isotope analyses, etc. only really give you a probability of where
something is from GIVEN you have an adequate sample from all possible
sources. This is a point that has been stressed in a lot of Pernicka's
lead isotope work and recently re-iterated (but for basalts and obsidians)
in Shackley's "Gamma Rays, X-Rays and Stone Tools", JAS 1998:259. As
Bernie Knapp said somewhere in print, all these chemical characterization
techniques usually just tell us where it is not from!
The interaction/lack of interaction between archaeologists, archaeo-
metrists, and hard scientists would be a whole discussion unto itself.
Later, Mark Hall
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