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Study on distribution of radionuclides in soil and pottery samples of archaeological sites of eastern India

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Abstract

The present study reports the first data on NORM distribution in soil and pottery samples collected from excavated sites of Erenda (Trench A1) and Bahiri (Trench YB1) located in East Medinipur, West Bengal, India. Collected potteries include grey-wares, red-wares, black-wares and black-red-wares. It was observed that 238U and 40K activities of the pottery samples are higher than that of the soil samples, which might be an indication of their different origin. 232Th activity is uniform along the depth and has similar distribution in both soil and pottery samples of Erenda and Bahiri.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been carried out under the DST INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship project (Inspire Code: IFA21-EAS 99; Sanction order: DST/INSPIRE/04/2021/00361 dated 28-03-2023). For the excavation, the authors are grateful to the University of Calcutta, for providing funds for the excavations. The Archaeological Survey of India is acknowledged for issuing the license for excavating the site. We acknowledge the support of the local people in the village of Erenda and Bahiri. We are thankful to the final-year students of the Department of Archaeology, University of Calcutta for their participation in the excavations and collecting the samples.

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  1. Diamond Harbour Women’s University, South 24 Parganas, Sarisha, 743368, India

    Nabanita Naskar

  2. University of Calcutta, 1 Reformatory Street, Kolkata, 700027, India

    Chandrima Shaha & Kaushik Gangopadhyay

  3. Department of Humanities and Social Science, IIT, Gandhinagar, India

    Ahana Ghosh

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  1. Nabanita Naskar
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Naskar, N., Shaha, C., Ghosh, A. et al. Study on distribution of radionuclides in soil and pottery samples of archaeological sites of eastern India. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 333, 1585–1595 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-023-09214-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-023-09214-7

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