Provenancing ancient materials with lead isotopes: overlap uncovered.

ABSTRACT: Lead isotope analysis has been used to provenance metals such as lead, silver and bronze for many decades. Different approaches to interpret lead isotope ratios were proposed, and various limitations of the method have been discussed and addressed. Overlap in composition between different possible ore sources is always mentioned as a major limitation in lead isotope studies. However, it has never been comprehensively studied using a multivariate statistical approach. In this paper, the kernel density estimation (KDE) approach previously proposed by the authors is applied to calculate overlap between possible ore source regions. Firstly, the copper and lead ores of the same regions are compared, to assess if they are consistent and thus can be combined to increase sample size for provenance

SUBMITTER: De Ceuster S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11805900 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature