A double feature with Kai Riehle

Sometimes, when you give a presentation, it just feels right and when you are done, you know that you delivered well. Doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes, I’m that lucky.

Last week I was very happy to present a joint talk with archaeologist Kai Riehle on Local pottery production and imports at Monte Iato: A Chemical Perspective. The venue was the COLLOQUIA ON PORTABLE X-RAY FLUORESCENCE, a series of such joint lectures planned and organized by the The Global p-XRF Network. And yes, that is a network focusing on portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, which I usually don’t use and am no expert in. However, Michaela Schauer, one of the initiators of this network kindly asked me to present on Neutron Activation Analysis. I hope I did not dissapoint.

The presentation was recorded and I’m happy to link it here:

As I said, I’m very happy about this talk myself, but Kai did really great as well. The discussion afterwards was very interesting, so all in all, it was a very nice evening. Thank you very much to the chair, Prof. Ioannis Liritzis and to Keelie Rix, who took the brunt of the organisation, herding Kai and me :-).

Workflow for Neutron Activation Analysis of archaeological ceramics @ ATI

Analyzing ceramics by NAA Today I received the news that my article ​(Sterba 2018)​ on my current workflow to analyze archaeological ceramics with Neutron Activation Analysis was put online. In this paper I describe the workflow I apply to archaeological ceramics from taking the samples in the first place, either on site or in the […]

A short visit to Greece 

This last few days I was able to flee the approaching bad weather in Vienna and travel to Greece. My first stop was at Aegina, an island only 70 minutes by ferry from Athens. There I visited the famous archeological excavation at Aegina Kolonna and was allowed to take samples from to pieces of pumice found there […]

Invited Talk in Dresden

[bibshow] Scientific insights into arts and cultural heritage The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden and the Hochschule der bildenden Künste Dresden cooperate to host a series of evening lectures where scientists from France, Germany and Austria will present their research on cultural artefacts dating from the stone age to the modern era to the […]

Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis

I had the honor to be invited to contribute a chapter to the Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis by the editor Alice Hunt of the Center of Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia. Only recently she informed me that the book is being advertised here and here. Right now production is set […]

Across Borders

Yesterday, I crossed the border between Austria and Germany to participate in the Across Borders Workshop Julia Budka kindly invited me. So I find myself sitting in the very impressive Musem of Egyptian Art in Munich, listening to all those colleagues from archaeology give their talks and reports. And while I’m able to gain quite […]

Interesting Article on Open Source Tools in Archaeology

While reading through R-bloggers, I came across an interesting article: Doing quantitative archaeology with open source software by ATOR not only lists several open-source tools that can be applied in Archaeology, they also explain why this is a good idea. Especially their argument about click trails hit a spot with me. This is something I […]

RHX-Dating revisited…

[bibshow file=all.bib] Our latest publication on RHX-Dating is online! Rehydroxylation-Dating is based on the observation that fired clay grows heavier and larger over time. This gain in mass is associated with water that is slowly moved very deeply into the material in a process called diffusion. The water is bound not as water molecule but […]