Donald Pate
Professor Pate was appointed foundation lecturer in Archaeology at Flinders University in 1990 following a two year post-doctoral research program in Archaeological Chemistry at Harvard University and the Australian National University.
Pate's initial field training was in the North American Southwest and Great Basin. He has also conducted fieldwork and research in California, Chile, Antigua, Australia, the Pacific, Italy, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Research for Pate's MA, PhD, and post-doctoral studies were all completed in South Australia in association with the South Australian Museum, University of Adelaide, and CSIRO Land and Water.
He established stable isotope analyses of archaeological bones and teeth as new teaching and research areas in Australia. Today these areas are represented as major sub-disciplines of archaeological chemistry in many universities throughout Australia and the surrounding regions.
Phone: +61 8 8201 2067
Address: Department of Archaeology
GPO Box 2100
Flinders University
Adelaide, SA 5001
Pate's initial field training was in the North American Southwest and Great Basin. He has also conducted fieldwork and research in California, Chile, Antigua, Australia, the Pacific, Italy, the Ukraine and Uzbekistan. Research for Pate's MA, PhD, and post-doctoral studies were all completed in South Australia in association with the South Australian Museum, University of Adelaide, and CSIRO Land and Water.
He established stable isotope analyses of archaeological bones and teeth as new teaching and research areas in Australia. Today these areas are represented as major sub-disciplines of archaeological chemistry in many universities throughout Australia and the surrounding regions.
Phone: +61 8 8201 2067
Address: Department of Archaeology
GPO Box 2100
Flinders University
Adelaide, SA 5001
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Papers by Donald Pate
Unlike other prehistoric archaeological data, materials recovered from the mortuary context provide access to individual behavior. The total elemental and isotopic composition of bone record quantitative signatures of long-term individual dietary intake. These dietary signatures provide one means to make inferences about differential access to resources in prehistoric societies. Archaeological bone chemistry data can be used to establish prehistoric access to subsistence resources from different marine and terrestrial ecosystems
by various individuals and territorial groups. The most reliable quantitative dietary information is derived from stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in bone collagen. In contrast, in vivo elemental dietary signatures in bone mineral are obscured by postmortem chemical changes in the burial environment. Hence, accurate dietary inferences from inorganic bone apatite will depend on controls for these postmortem alterations.
Schiffer's recent treatise, Formation Processes of the Archaeological Record (1987), provides an explicit theoretical framework in which to address postmortem chemical changes in buried bone. Previous attempts to elucidate the nature of chemical interactions between
buried bone and associated soils have been limited by their use of l) simple diffusion models, and 2) total elemental soil composition or acid soluble extracts rather than the soluble and exchangeable ions available to solution under field conditions. Models addressing the fossilization process in bone must consider both ionic substitution and mineralization mechanisms of diagenesis. Current solubility profile techniques for the differentiation of biogenic and diagenetic chemical phases in fossil bone neglect ionic substitution. Ionic soil solution data from an arid-land South Australian archaeological site are presented to demonstrate the importance of such information to the development and testing of these predictive models.
The Roonka Flat Dune provides an excellent natural laboratory to address postmortem diagenesis in buried bone. The chemically homogenous sand dune was used as an Aboriginal burial ground during a major portion of the last 10,000 years. The ionically depleted soil solutions in this siliceous dune should limit both secondary mineralization and ionic substitution mechanisms of diagenesis. Thus, if bone mineral is ever expected to escape the ravages of postmortem chemical reactions this is one burial environment in which to test the null hypothesis. In order to address the various diagenetic mechanisms,
elemental ratios in the dune soil solutions were compared with those in rib bone from archaeological human skeletons and modern terrestrial mammal controls.
Even though significant diagenetic changes were not expected, the Roonka archaeological bone was enriched with Si, AI, Mn, Ba, Fe, S, Sr, K, and Ti and depleted in Mg relative to the modern controls. A variety of processes including physical contamination with quartz and secondary carbonates and ionic substitution from the soil solution are responsible
for these postmortem chemical alterations. The concentrations of the soluble alkaline earth metals Mg, Sr, and Ba increase relative to Ca with duration of burial, whereas the alkali metal K and the less soluble Ti, Si, Fe, AI, and Mn show no significant changes with time. The mobile Mg, Sr, and Ba occur in secondary minerals and substitute for Ca in the
hydroxyapatite lattice. In contrast, there is a rapid equilibration between the less soluble soil elements and the buried rib bone. It appears that the bone has been physically contaminated by sediments containing Ti, Si, Fe, Al, and Mn. Thus, diagenetic mechanisms involving secondary mineralization and ionic substitution from the soil solution are not likely
for these elements. These postmortem chemical changes will provide major obstacles to paleodietary inferences from the elemental composition of archaeological bone mineral. In the absence of
extensive archaeologically associated faunal controls with known diets, dietary inferences from elements in the inorganic apatite component of interred human bone will remain problematic.
Thesis on file at:
1) Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies
2) Department of Prehistory, RSPacS, Australian National University
3) Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney
4) Division of Archaeology, South Australian Museum
5) Centre for Prehistory, University of Western Australia