The provenance of the obsidian used at Aknashen
Résumé
Obsidian is an essential raw material for Neolithic sites of the Ararat valley: 99% of Aknashen’s lithic industry (Chabot et al. in this volume) is made of this volcanic glass, 99% of Aratashen’s (Badalyan et al. 2007: 43), and 97% of Masis Blur’s (Martirosyan-Olshansky 2018a: 21).
In order to determine the provenances of obsidians found at Aknashen, a series of analyses was carried out; they showed the multi-source character of supply, pinpointed the geographical area of the volcanoes whose obsidian was exploited, and distinguished the main sources from the secondary ones.
The data from similar studies on the sites of Aratashen (Badalyan et al. 2007; Badalyan 2010; Chataigner and Gratuze 2014b) and Masis Blur (Badalyan 2010; Martirosyan-Olshansky 2018a) have shown similarities and differences in the models of obsidian procurement, but have also highlighted the dominant tendencies and the main directions of the supply network.
A first group of obsidian Neolithic artefacts from Aknashen – 10 non-stratified samples – was analysed by J. Blackman via the neutron activation method (INAA) at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (in Maryland, USA) (Badalyan et al. 2010). A second group, comprising 40 artefacts originating from horizons V-III, was analysed by Kh. Meliksetian and E. Pernicka at the Curt-Englehorn-Zentrum
Archëometrie (Manheim, Germany), also by using INAA (Meliksetian et al. forthcoming). Finally, A. Juharyan (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Armenia) studied, through portable XRF (pXRF), 118 samples from undisturbed contexts of horizon III (Azatyan and Juharyan forthcoming).
In the present study, 109 samples were analysed, originating from horizons IV (40 artefacts), V (26 artefacts), VI (13 artefacts) and VII (30 artefacts). In each horizon, some contexts (UFs/Features) have been selected and, among all the obsidian artefacts of these contexts, a selection has been made in proportion to the visual characteristics (texture, colour).