Measuring Trace Element Concentrations in Artiodactyl Cannonbones using Portable X-Ray Fluorescence

Artiodactyl bones are the most common faunal remains found in Washington prehistoric archaeology sites, but they are often too fragmented to accurately identify a family, genus, or species. Traditional faunal analysis can only organize unidentifiable bone fragments into size class, and chemical methods often require the destruction of bone samples. In this thesis research, I tested a new, nondestructive faunal analysis technique using portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) to measure trace element concentrations in comparative collection and archaeological bone samples. Using cannonbones from five different artiodactyl species, I collected trace element data from 50 comparative collection specimens and 18 archaeological specimens previously identified to species. I used a Random Forest classification analysis to predict the family and species of modern comparative and archaeological specimens based on collected trace element data. Species identification accuracy was 70% for modern specimens and 22% for archaeological specimens, while family identification accuracy was 82% for modern specimens and 67% for archaeological specimens. These results suggest that identification pXRF method used in this thesis is promising, but would require further work to be definitive.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Cultural and Environmental Resource Management

Year dc:date.available

2019

Author dc:creator

• Henderson, Joshua L.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Patrick M. Lubinski
• Meaghan Wetherell
• Patrick T. McCutcheon

• XRF
• Bone Chemistry
• Zooarchaeology
• Washington
• Wyoming
• Archaeological Anthropology
• Biochemistry
• Multivariate Analysis

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/1128

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-2118