Heritage Cases

Project Aim The primary aim of this analysis is to determine the source of the pitch material recovered from the Sao Jose vessel. We found the tar under a ballast block and have approximately 100g. Only about 10g will be exported. In identifying whether this material is plant-derived or from another natural source (i.e. bitumen), we will attempt to taxonomically identify the pitch by the analysis of its chemical constituents, and if possible, try to isolate the geographic region where the pitch source may be acquired. The instruments noted above are currently housed in the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art at the University of Oxford. The equipment, especially the GC-MS, has been optimised for the analysis of the constituents of residues. The Agilent gas chromatographer coupled mass spectrometer has run samples from both archaeological and ethnographic specimens from a variety of geographic regions in both the northern and southern hemisphere. Our facilities presently have an extensive reference collection of plant materials that have been analysed on this instrument, and as a result, the pitch material would also be need to be analysed on the same instrument for comparative results. This is standard practice among other laboratories that analyse archaeological material (i.e. Charrie-Duhaut et al. 2013, Burger et al. 2009). The person who will be doing the analysis is: Margaret-Ashley Veall D.Phil Candidate School of Archaeology| Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art University of Oxford email: margaret-ashley.veall@arch.ox.ac.uk