Integrating geochemistry and ethnography to understand modern and ancient ochre use

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising interdisciplinary scholar studying ochre pigments from Stone Age archaeological sites. Understanding the potential significance and meaning of ancient symbolism has been enhanced by novel geochemical techniques for provenance studies of ochre, particularly minimally destructive trace element fingerprinting. This study builds on these methods by adapting iron, strontium, and lead stable isotope analysis to geologic sources used by traditional societies in Kenya today, and to ochre artifacts and rock art paint samples. Multi-isotope analysis can improve the accuracy of provenance identification, and also contribute to our understanding of the geologic mechanisms of ochre deposit formation. Finally, information provided by indigenous people who currently use ochre will allow us to learn more about their pigment source preferences, criteria for raw material selection, techniques of pigment preparation, and symbolic meanings associated with geologic sources, rock art images, and pigmented artifacts. Enhanced understanding of modern ochre use and its meanings will shed new light on the evolution of human symbolism from the Stone Age to present day. Communicating information and identity with symbols is an essential attribute of our species. Humans have used red and yellow ochre pigments for symbolic expression for hundreds of thousands of years. However, rock art and other practices involving these iron-based pigments are understudied in the modern era. Research on this rapidly vanishing form of cultural heritage is thus critical to understanding the origins of symbolism. This project bridges archaeology, ethnography, and geochemistry to investigate ochre use. First, recent rock art sites and the ochre deposits used for pigments will be identified through collaboration with modern rock art painters. Geochemical techniques will then be used to characterize the ochre deposits, and to match them to paint samples from rock art sites and ochre artifacts from archaeological sites. This approach will facilitate verification of the sources of rock art pigments identified from ethnographic information. This project will refine minimally destructive analytical methods that can be used for ochre pigments and other iron-containing materials. Improving methods to determine geologic sources of ochre pigments has significant implications for identifying looted heritage items, forgeries, and for stemming the illicit antiquities trade that endangers tangible culture and fuels conflict around the world.