NSF Award
1523409
The Center for Archaeology, Materials and Applied Spectroscopy (CAMAS) at Idaho State University provides analytical elemental, isotopic and micro-scale imaging tools to researchers in the archaeological, paleoenvironmental and geochemical sciences.<br/>Since its inception in 2008, the center has completed analysis for over 400 novel research Projects: these include faculty and student researchers at ISU, national and international academic research collaborations and fee-based contract analysis. This award will provide support to upgrade CAMAS' instrumentation and to make its services available to a wide range of researchers in archaeology and multiple other areas of research. The data thus collected, in addition to offering insight into past behaviors have the potential to address current day environmental issues by providing more precise characterizations of present day environments and setting these into an extended chronological framework. <br/><br/>CAMAS has endeavored to position itself as a regionally-recognized archaeometry laboratory with disciplinary strengths in provenance analysis, paleoclimatic reconstruction and biomolecular archaeology. Implicit in this research mission is to make these technologies available to researchers regardless of their ability to pay for archaeometric services. CAMAS was envisioned as a user-based facility,meaning that individual researchers are encouraged to perform the instrumental analyses themselves and participate in data collection, reduction and interpretation under the mentoring of CAMAS staff and research personnel. Presently, CAMAS offsets the cost of subsidized analysis with fee-based contracts from research, governmental and commercial clientele. This award will increase the opportunities that CAMAS can provide to researchers, through acquisition of integrative technologies, initiation of a visiting researcher program and provision of training opportunities for graduate students to become expert users and interpreters of generated data. Funding will support analytical work with a broad range of materials, from archaeological lithics and ceramics, sediments and residues to bones and teeth, and will bring the expertise of archaeologists, geologists and forensic scientists to bear on the interpretation of analytical results. Specifically this award provides funding for equipment upgrade and maintenance (pXRF and SEM-EDS), acquisition of a compact, high-sensitivity FTIR, tools and reagents for constructing matrix-matched analytical standards, and a comprehensive visiting researcher program promoting subsidized analysis, research design, method development, and post-experiment data validation and archaeological interpretation.
