Abstract
The task of identifying the provenance of archaeological objects is often called “fingerprinting”. Amongst the evidence currently used are chemical and isotopic compositions. In contrast to human fingerprints, which according to present forensic knowledge are unique, archaeometric fingerprinting is not yet able to identify with certainty the source(s). Exclusion is more decisive than inclusion: according to archaeometric arguments an artefact can be certainly incompatible with a number of sources, but can be possibly compatible with a number of others. A judicious combination of several chemical and isotopic indicators can vastly reduce the number of ambiguous assignments and may ultimately lead to a very successful archaeological tool.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Prof. Gisela Grupe for organizing the workshop in Munich and to all colleagues there for stimulating discussions. Long discussions with A. R. Heri on the applications of PCA to geochemical problems are gratefully acknowledged; any remaining misunderstandings are solely my responsibility.
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Villa, I.M. (2016). Provenancing Bronze: Exclusion, Inclusion, Uniqueness, and Occam’s Razor. In: Grupe, G., McGlynn, G. (eds) Isotopic Landscapes in Bioarchaeology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48339-8_8
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