Archaeological Research Facility

The non-destructive whole rock analysis here of 17 obsidian artifacts from archaeological contexts along the Middle Awash River Basin, Ethiopia indicates a very diverse obsidian provenance assemblage similar to the diversity seen in the Negash et al. (2011) study including known and, as yet, unlocated sources. Many of those artifacts were analyzed at the Berkeley Archaeological XRF Laboratory using similar methods and calibrations (see Shackley 2005, 2019:Supplement). The results here were compared to the Negash et al. (2011) study as well as source standard data at this laboratory.