AN EVALUATION OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RELEVANCE OF WEAK-ACID EXTRACTIONICP - WHITE MOUNTAIN REDWARE AS A CASE-STUDY

A weak-acid extraction technique for inductively coupled plasma spectr oscopy (ICP) was recently advocated as an inexpensive, highly precise method of chemical characterization of archaeological ceramics. We cri tically evaluate this approach on the basis of a large sample of South western ceramics which were analysed both by weak-acid extraction ICP and neutron activation analysis. The comparison of the two data sets s hows significant compositional discrepancies that lead to widely diver gent archaeological interpretations. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited.