A Physics Laboratory in Oxford Starts Asking What Objects Are Made Of

Archaeometry applies the instruments and methods of the physical sciences, spectrometry, isotope analysis, thermoluminescence and X ray fluorescence among them, to archaeological material, asking what an object is physically made of and where its raw material came from rather than what it depicts or what a text says about it. The discipline took its name and its institutional home from the founding in 1958 of the journal Archaeometry by the University of Oxford's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, a laboratory built explicitly to bring physics and chemistry to bear on archaeological questions that stylistic or textual analysis alone could not answer.

For the atlas the method offers an independent line of evidence for sacred objects whose origin or authenticity a tradition's own account asserts. Trace element analysis of the metal in a claimed relic, isotope sourcing of stone used in a temple's construction, or pigment analysis of an icon can confirm or contradict the material history a devotional text describes, and unlike stylistic dating, the results do not depend on anyone's judgment about what a period's art was supposed to look like. Archaeometric findings are cited here as physical evidence standing alongside, and sometimes against, textual and art historical claims.