Prompt gamma activation analysis for determining the elemental composition of archaeological ceramics

Sergey Borisovich Borzakov, A. Zh. Zhomartova, Andrey Yu. Dmitriev, Vladimir Yu. Koval, Constantin Hramco, Wael M. Badawy

2022

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)

DOI 10.1016/j.apradiso.2022.110152

Data confidence 70 medium

How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

The first experiments were carried out to study the elemental composition of archaeological ceramics using prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) at the pulsed reactor IBR-2, Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics (FLNP) - Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). A radiation-resistant n-type High Purity Germanium (HPGe) detector was used to measure the radioactivity. The concentrations of 14 elements were determined namely; Al, C, Ca, Fe, Gd, H, K, Mn, Na, P, S, Si, Sm, and Ti. The obtained results were compared with those analyzed by other analytical techniques INAA (Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis) and portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) for the same archaeological batches. The results revealed a good agreement within a range of 1-30%. These insights will contribute to the discussion of improving the PGAA installation and automation of the data obtained, which in turn will improve the quality of analysis and increase the number of determined elements. In this work results are presented, and the analytical merits are compared.