{"id":11,"date":"2014-09-18T15:25:36","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T19:25:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/?page_id=11"},"modified":"2016-03-26T16:55:42","modified_gmt":"2016-03-26T20:55:42","slug":"amber-research","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/amber-research\/","title":{"rendered":"About Amber"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The study of amber is of scientific importance in the field of archaeometry<\/strong>, the branch of archaeology that applies modern analytical methods to the study of material remains of past cultures.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More than 6000 artifacts analyzed<\/strong><\/div>\n

Over the past four decades the Amber Research Laboratory (ARL) has\u00a0made a significant contribution to the field of organic archaeometry. The origin of more than 6000 ancient amber artifacts from Europe, the Near East and China have been studied.\u00a0An example of a study is the analysis of amber carvings from the Liao Dynasty in northeast China which has been shown to have come to the Far East from\u00a0Northern Europe a thousand years ago.<\/p>\n

Research techniques<\/strong><\/div>\n

Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectrometry and gas chromatography-mass \"2\"<\/a>spectrometry (GCMS) are used to study the chemical composition of ambers and resins to infer the botanical sources of \u00a0archaeological materials. These methods have led to the study of tars\u00a0and pitches,\u00a0which are organic materials\u00a0used in shipbuilding and to line amphorae in which wine and pickled fish were transported in the Mediterranean region.\u00a0For example the tars from the Mediterranean shipwrecks were determined to be mostly from the Aleppo pine (Pinus Halepensis).<\/em><\/p>\n

Comparative studies have also been carried out on pine tars made under controlled laboratory conditions. These studies made it possible to determine the technology and temperatures used in making ancient tars and pitches.<\/p>\n

Two studies on ancient food remains were carried out in the Amber Research Laboratory (ARL): a)\u00a0remains of the funerary feast of King Midas<\/a>\u00a0of Phrygia, b)\u00a0organic residues in Minoan and Mycenaean pottery. The latter study was presented\u00a0at an\u00a0exhibition in the Greek National Museum in the summer of 1999.<\/p>\n

Select Findings<\/strong><\/h3>\n

It will, of course, forever remain a secret\u2026\u201d<\/strong>
\nAfter finding thousands of amber beads in the royal graves in the citadel of Mycenae in 1876, celebrated German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann wrote: \u201cIt will, of course, forever remain a secret to us whether this amber is derived from the coast of the Baltic Sea or from Italy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And for almost a century, it did remain a secret.<\/strong>
\nThen in the 1960s, when Vassar turned 100 and some students were enthusing over the cutest Beatle, elsewhere on campus, in a chemistry lab, Professor Curt W. Beck (founder of Amber Research laboratory) and his students were studying beetles preserved in amber from millions of years ago. Beck and his students found that the infrared spectra of amber and other fossil resins could be used to determine their origin, thus revealing the secret of the amber beads and of so many other ancient remains.<\/p>\n

\n

Where were the Mycenaeans getting these huge quantities of amber, three and a half millennia ag<\/strong>o?<\/strong>\"4\"<\/a>
\nWe now know that, during the Bronze Age, this amber came from what is now Denmark. Under the direction of Professor Beck and his research associate Edith Stout, the Amber Research Laboratory at Vassar College has determined the origin of more than 6000 ancient amber artifacts from Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, as well as from the Near East. Beck and Stout used a computer program written by a Vassar undergraduate to compare the infrared spectra of archaeological finds with those of about 2000 naturally occurring fossil resins, from which an in-house reference \u201clibrary\u201d was created. These results have been reported in more than 150 publications, many of them with undergraduate student coauthors.
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<\/div>\n

Amber from China found to have European origins\u2026<\/strong>
\nWith the discovery of amber deposits in Liaoning Province in northeast China, the question arose: Were the amber artifacts of the Liao dynasty made from local sources? The Amber Research Lab was able to answer this \"5\"<\/a>question. Using infrared spectroscopy and using only milligrams of sample, the ARL researchers analyzed amber artifacts from the Liao dynasty. The findings have shown that amber used to make these artifacts was Baltic traded from Northern Europe to the Far East a thousand years ago.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research The study of amber is of scientific importance in the field of archaeometry, the branch of archaeology that applies modern analytical methods to the study of material remains of past cultures.\u00a0 More than 6000 artifacts analyzed Over the past four decades the Amber Research Laboratory (ARL) has\u00a0made a significant contribution to the field of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3733,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-11","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/11\/revisions\/262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/arl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}