Materials of conquest: A study using portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry in the metallurgical analysis of two sixteenth-century Spanish expeditions

This study traced metallic materials recovered from a number of 16th-century Spanish archaeological sites across the southeastern United States using handheld portable X-Ray fluorescence (PXRF) technology. Artifacts recovered from the Hernando de Soto winter encampment site (Martin site), and the Tristan de Luna colonization fleet shipwrecks (Emanuel Point shipwrecks), and European artifacts of unknown origin from Native American archaeological sites were tested using an Olympus Innov-X PXRF analyzer. Through the use of basic mathematical analysis, iron and copper alloy artifacts evaluated using standard deviation and Euclidean distance scoring techniques resulting in a basic chemical comparison. Findings were not able to conclusively tie particular artifacts to specific expeditions, but similarities in whole sample sets were found, leading to interesting conclusions and potential for further analysis.