Destructive and Non-destructive Techniques in Provenance Studies of Late Palaeo-Indian Quartzite Artifacts from the Great Lakes Region, Canada and USA.

Destructive and Non-destructive Techniques in Provenance Studies of Late Palaeo-Indian Quartzite Artifacts from the Great Lakes Region, Canada and USA. Abstract Quartz rich lithic materials were widely used in the manufacture of stone artifacts by the Palaeo-Indian cultures in the Great Lakes region of North America. The Early Palaeo-Indians (ca. 12,000 -10,000 YBP) used fine grained chert, silicified quartz arenite, orthoquartzite and some quartzite, while the Late Palaeo-Indian Plano culture (ca. 10,000 - 7,500 YBP) commonly used coarser grained materials, including quartzites, silicious quartz arenites and sandstones from bedrock quarry sources. As many of these quartzites and sandstones are visually similar samples from several major quarry sources, including the Lorrain, Bar River and Mesnard Formations, and the Ajibik Quartzite and Hixton Silicified Sandstone, were examined using both destructive and non-destructive techniques. Multivariate analysis of chemical data from x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) provides clear separation of several of these potential sources, as does standard petrographic analysis. While these methods are useful in identifying source materials they may involve partial destruction of samples, even in small quantities. The use of cathodoluminescence (CL) microscopy offer an additional non-destructive method which has no lasting effect on the artifact sample. Samples from Hixton Silicified Sandstone can be clearly differentiated from older sandstones as the detrital quartz grains, the early chalcedonic rim cements and the late pore fill chert cement each have distinct luminescence characteristics.