Introduction and History

What is archaeomineralogy? The term has been used at least once before (Mitchell 1985), but this volume, now in an updated and expanded Second Edition, is the first modern publication to lay down a scholarly basis and the systematics for this subdiscipline. Students sometimes call an introductory archaeology course “stones and bones”. Archaeomineralogy covers the stones component of this phrase. Of course, archaeology consists of a great deal more than just stones and bones. Contemporary archaeology is based on stratigraphy, geomorphology, chronometry, anthropology, and a host of other disciplines in addition to those devoted to stones and bones (Rapp and Hill 2006).