XRF in Areas B and H

The goal of this analysis was to determine any kind of pollution associated with the two structures I and VII and their surroundings, and from this to infer human activities such as copper processing, food production and consumption, animal husbandry and others that took place at Al-Khashbah during the Early Bronze Age.

To achieve this, soil samples were taken every 10 m at a depth of approximately 5 cm along two straight lines, one 830 m long between Building I and Building VII and the other 260 m long to the west of Buildings I, VIII and IX. X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (XRF) was carried out at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Mainz to determine quantitatively the major and trace elements of the material. For the major element analysis, the 84 samples were first ground (< 63 µm) and fused into tablets at a temperature of approximately 1050 °C. For the determination of trace elements, powder compacts were made from 6 g of the finely ground sample, which were homogenised, pressed into tablets and then dried. The actual measurements were carried out using a MagiXPro spectrometer from Panalytical.