ABSTRACT Glassy andesite and basalt are volcanic rocks often valued as a lithic raw material by ancient people. Crucial to examining trade and migration routes of ancient communities is lithic sourcing based on geochemical comparisons of artifacts and known quarry outcrops. Nevertheless, most past sourcing attempts using energy dispersive X‐ray fluorescence (ED‐XRF) analysis were restricted by traditional skepticism about obtaining accurate chemical compositions nondestructively from weathered surfaces of these rocks. Our study using modern ED‐XRF equipment in conjunction with a rhyolitic obsidian calibration preliminarily successfully matched artifacts to geologic source groups. This paper aims to refine the sourcing method by combining the results obtained from neutron activation analysis (NAA) and ED‐XRF. Comparison between NAA whole‐rock chemical composition and ED‐XRF concentrations on key elements measured on the same geological samples demonstrated good agreement, even on weathered surfaces. ED‐XRF instrument settings used here enabled sufficient detection intensity to be obtained even from small flakes larger than the collimator diameter, making it possible to provenance the whole andesite assemblage of a site. This methodological advancement significantly improves our ability to accumulate and interpret information on the foraging behavior, the trade and exchange networks of ancient people, not only in this Japanese context but beyond.
Моrisaki et al. (Fri,) studied this question.