The second edition of The Biomarker Guide is a fully updated and expanded version of this essential reference. Now in two volumes, it provides a comprehensive account of the role that biomarker technology plays both in petroleum exploration and in understanding Earth history and processes. Biomarkers and Isotopes in the Environment and Human History details the origins of biomarkers and introduces basic chemical principles relevant to their study. It discusses analytical techniques, and applications of biomarkers to environmental and archaeological problems. The Biomarker Guide is an invaluable resource for geologists, petroleum geochemists, biogeochemists, environmental scientists and archaeologists.

The Biomarker Guide

Age constraint on Burmese amber based on U–Pb dating of zircons

Amber from Kachin, northern Burma, has been used in China for at least a millennium for carving decorative objects, but the only scientific collection of inclusion fossils, at the Natural History Museum, London (NHML), was made approximately 90 years ago. Age of the material was ambiguous, but probably Cretaceous. Numerous new records and taxa occur in this amber, based on newly excavated material in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) containing 3100 organisms. Without having all groups studied, significant new records and taxa thus far include the following (a † refers to extinct taxa): For Plants: An angiosperm flower (only the third in Cretaceous amber), spores and apparent sporangia of an unusual but common fungus, hepatophyte thalli and an archegoniophore of Marchantiaceae, and leafy shoots of Metasequoia (Coniferae). Metasequoia is possibly the source of the amber. For Animals: Mermithidae and other Nematoda; the oldest ixodid tick (a larval Amblyomma); bird feathers; and the onl...

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Fossiliferous Cretaceous Amber from Myanmar (Burma): Its Rediscovery, Biotic Diversity, and Paleontological Significance

Organic residue analysis utilizes analytical organic chemical techniques to identify the nature and origins of organic remains that cannot be characterized using traditional techniques of archaeological investigation (because they are either amorphous or invisible). The field is founded upon the principle that the biomolecular, or biochemical, components of organic materials associated with human activity survive in a wide variety of locations and deposits at archaeological sites. The archaeological information contained in organic residues is represented by the biomolecular components of the natural products that contribute to the formation of a given residue. By applying appropriate separation (chromatographic) and identification (mass spectrometric) techniques, the preserved, and altered, biomolecular components of such residues can be revealed. Once identified, the Archaeological Biomarker Concept can be applied, wherein the structure and even isotopic composition(s) of a given biomolecule or suite of biomolecules (the ‘chemical fingerprint’) can be related to the compositions of organisms exploited by humans in the past. As the organic residue field emerges from its pre-paradigmatic phase, and the organic residue revolution gathers pace, the way is open for challenging many long-held archaeological hypotheses and offering new perspectives on the study of human activity in the past.

Organic residue analysis in archaeology: the archaeological biomarker revolution*

Book description: Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology provides an invaluable overview of geoarchaeology and how it can be used effectively in the study of archaeological sites and contexts. Taking a pragmatic and functional approach, this book presents: a fundamental, broad-based perspective of the essentials of modern geoarchaeology in order to demonstrate the breadth of the approaches and the depth of the problems that it can tackle. The rapid advances made in the area in recent years, but also gives the reader a firm grasp of conventional approaches. Covers traditional topics with the emphasis on landscapes, as well as anthropogenic site formation processes and their investigation. Provides guidelines for the presentation of field and laboratory methods and the reporting of geoarchaeological results. Essential reading for archaeology undergraduate and graduate students, practicing archaeologists and geoscientists who need to understand and apply geoarchaeological methodologies.

Practical and theoretical geoarchaeology

Amber has engaged the human imagination from the beginning of recorded history and, as the archaeological record shows, for as long as this apparent product of the earth, of mysterious origin and singular properties, has been known to our ancestors.

Spectroscopic investigations of amber

Infra-Red Spectra and the Origin of Amber

The infrared spectra of amber and the identification of baltic amber

Comparison of infrared spectra of amber no older than Oligo-Miocene with present-day resins provides convincing evidence as to source, especially with corroboration from paleobotanical remains and knowledge of living resin producers. Spectroscopy is also useful in establishing that amber in widely separated areas in the Cretaceous and Eocene is from the same botanical source, although it may not be possible to relate these older resins to those from present-day plant populations.

Infrared Spectra as a Means of Determining Botanical Sources of Amber

A royal banquet has been reconstructed from residues in pots found inside the tomb.

Curt W. Beck

Papers

Spectroscopic investigations of amber

Infra-Red Spectra and the Origin of Amber

The infrared spectra of amber and the identification of baltic amber

Infrared Spectra as a Means of Determining Botanical Sources of Amber

A funerary feast fit for King Midas