S u s a n V. Meschell University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois 60637
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Application of Physics and Chemistry to Archeology A new undergraduate course
Educators teaching chemistry and physics to nonscience majors often encounter apprehension and even reluctance on the nart of the students toward the subject matter. While teaching an undergraduate science course at the ilniversity oiChicseo to nonsrimce maiors, 1 attempted to wercome this &obleihy offering some optional study topics from which students could choose the ones which appealed to their interest. The "Archeological Application of Chemistry and Physics" modules were selected by a large number of students with enough frequency to encourage me to design a complete program around the topic.
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General Description of the Program The program was designed as a one semester course for primarily undergraduate students. The course already had a trial run in the Fall of 1974 a t Roosevelt University, Chicago, to a group of students of heterogeneous academic background. The student population included art history, anthropology, and geography majors, two professional conservators, and a M.S. candidate in forensic chemistry. Consequently the mathematical sophistication had to he tailored to suit the average level of the registrants. In view of the wide range of background and skill, this was indeed a most challenging nrohlem. r~ Roughly two-thirds of the semester was spent on discussing and evnluatinr! archeological dating procehses. Tahle 1 illustrates the topics coverecf. For detailed text and movie references see Tables 2 and 3. The principles of carhon-14, archeomagnetism, thermoluminescence, fission track analysis, and obsidian dating. processes were discussed in detail. I n . addirim to these, some short topici were also covered at srudent request. These included tritium dating, dating ancient temperaturt. changes using (jxygen isotope ratio studies, and others. Over and beyond exploring the rundamental principles, the sample preparation, instrumentation. and sratistiral relinMity of rash met hcd was discussed in considerable detnil. (.'onaidering each dating process, appropriate rrrent jullrnal artlrles a r r e assigned fur reading and these were subsequently re\,irwed in class. 'l'hr assigned journal articles and books cwered a wide rangr uf sample types such as glass, pottery, minerals, paintings, statues, hones, hronzes, ink, erc. H v this appnmrh 1 expected to appeal to the personal interest in each indi\.idual student. Toward the 1 s t third of the srmester each student was asked to prepare a term paper on a topic of his or her choice. The students chose topics which were closely related to their own particular field-of i n t e r e ~ t . ~ In the absence of appropriate laboratory facilities every effort was made to illu&a& as much as feasible the applications of physics and chemistry to archeology via visual aid. Tahle 2 shows the list of movies related to this field that I found available a t the present. The movies were intended to
show how excavations are conducted, how samples are collected, and the rypei 01' artifacts gathered, depicting a wide \.ariery of situations where the dating and authenticating methods discussed in class would be of use. The first group of movies rrpresents selections rhat 1 found suitable for the rollrge level audience. These movies proved to he useful not onl\r for illustrations but also for inducinccreative discussion. he second group includes movies for possible future use. Weekly reading assignments were given throughout the semester, which are shown in Tables 1and 3. Since the class consiste4of students of widely varying background, the use of Scientific American offprints turned out to he very appropriate. The art majors did not find these excessively difficult and the more scientifically oriented students were able to proceed further with other references. We used a considerable number of articles from the journal Archeometry, which I regarded the best compromise between level of scientific content and illustrative background information. The list of hooks also strongly underlines the interdisciplinary nature of this course. For more practical illustrations of conservation problems the journal Studies in Conservation was used with success. Whenever possible numerical problems were also assigned
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Table 1. Week of:
Sept. 16
Topic: Introduction; plan of topics. Mathematical evaluation. s ro f recommonoeo D O O ~ S . ~ e x t : ~ . r c ~an .c~ anio n.c ear cnem.rtry. M o l e Ill. sept. 2 3 T O P C: I ~ ~ , o o on ~ e r t : r t A , n r r . h o . 811, a. -or,y. sem. 30 TODIC: I o t n ~ m o na r m aeca\ of caroon-14.Samole ~
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OCt. 7
Oct. 14 OCt. 21 Oct. 28 NO". 4
week. Topic: carbon-14 dating. E q u i p m e n t ; statistical
NO".
oec. 2
Dec. 9
Jan. 6
Final
reli-
ability. J. W. Michels. Topic: T r i t i u m dating. Ancient temperatures. Review of t h e principles of mass spectrometry. Movie (21. Text: Sei. Amer. No. 815. T o p i c Thermoluminescence. P h e n o m e n o n ; equipment.
Text:
J. W. M i C h e l L T o p i c ~ a t i n gby thermoluminescence. critical comparison of methodology. Text: M. S. Tite; H. N. Michael a n d E. K. Ralph. T o p i c Introduction into paleomagnetirm. Phenomenon;
11 T o p i c
Nov. 18 NO". 25
Same as previous
Text:
Text:
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640 1 Journal of Chemical Education
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