Studies of archaeological evidence in prehistoric industrial mineral use of clay demonstrate the feasibility of new, low-cost methods for today's industry

Portable instruments that can be used for mineral analysis, both in the field and in collection facilities, have broad applications in many fields, especially geology and archaeology. The PIMA-SP (portable infrared mineral analyzer), originally used for gold mining in Australia, has been used by geologists and archaeologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for more than 15 years to source rocks used to make prehistoric pipes and figurines from the Midwest, PIMA spectroscopy has also been used at the Illinois State Geological Survey to study carbonates, industrial clays, granite aggregates, and pore-filling minerals in oil reservoirs and aquifers. Our research shows that the combination of PIMA spectroscopy and traditional laboratory-based techniques, such as X-ray diffraction, is particularly effective for analyzing materials composed primarily of clay minerals and objects that cannot be destructively sampled.