W ELCOME

TO THE FIFTH EDITION OF THE CLEPSYDRA CHRONICLE ................... 1

SUMMER

VOLUME 5

2013

THE M ANCHESTER

MUSEUM IS WORKING WITH T EAM

RHX ........................... 2

E XCITING

NEWS FROM OTHER RESEARCHERS WORKING ON RHX DATING ....... 4

Clepsydra chronicle

Welcome to the fifth edition of the Clepsydra Chronicle. We are pleased

to report that our iButton temperature survey is now underway. We would like to extend a big thank you to all those who are involved in collecting temperature data for us. Other exciting news is that our new RHX web-pages are finally live. As spring has sprung here in the UK, the cover image for this issue is of a mural on Newton Street, Manchester, only a short walk from the university campus in Manchester city centre. Keeping with the Manchester theme, the Manchester Museum is heavily engaged in academic research at the University of Manchester and will be involved in our current project, see page 2. In other news, we enjoyed a visit from Professor Scarlett, Michigan Technology University, see

page 3.
Image Team RHX

Please send any correspondence to rhxdating@gmail.com and for more details about rehydroxylation check out http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/our-research/research-themes/datingfired-clay-ceramics/
The NERC project is a collaborative project. Team RHX is Dr Moira Wilson, University of Manchester, Dr Cathy Batt, University of Bradford, Dr Andrea Hamilton, University of Edinburgh, Dr Margaret Carter and Dr Sarah-Jane Clelland, University of Manchester. Newsletter content is produced by Dr Clelland.

See their blog for more updates from the museum http://ancientworldsmanchester.wordpress.com/

The Manchester Museum is part of

The University of Manchester and the curators there contribute to the Universitys research and higher learning agendas. The Museum is heavily involved in academic research and student teaching. As part of its role in supporting academics in the wider university the Museum is considering sympathetically Team RHXs request to test ceramics associated with one of the more significant items in Manchesters archaeology collection, the Manchester Word Square, as Byran Sitch explains.
The piece of pottery is inscribed with five five-letter words in Latin forming a palindrome or a word square. Word Squares are also referred to as Sator or Rotas Squares because they contain the Latin words SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS or Arepo the Sower guides the plough with care. It is not clear how this should be interpreted. The words are written in a square so they can be read top-to-bottom, left-to-right and right-to-left. These square are regarded by some as a cryptic markers for the outside of an early Christian house, because the letters resolve into a crossshape reading PATERNOSTER (Our Father) both down and across. The letters that are left over, A and O, are also significant because in the New Testament Jesus said, I am the alpha and the omega, I am the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters respectively of the Greek alphabet. It has been argued that the Word Square provided a means for believers to indicate their presence in a community at a time when the Christian religion was persecuted by the Roman authorities. If so, the Manchester Word Square may be the earliest evidence for Christianity in northern Britain. The Manchester Museum holds sizeable archives from sites excavated by members of the University and by the former Manchester Field Archaeology Unit. They provide a major resource for research into Manchester's early history and archaeology. Team RHX has requested permission to sample ceramic material associated with the Word Square.

Publication update
We would like to announce that we have had a journal paper accepted by Archaeometry. The paper is entitled Rehydroxylation of fire-clay ceramics: factors affecting early-stage mass gain in dating experiments. This paper presents our current understanding of the observed mass gain in ceramic material both after drying at 105C and after dehydroxylating at 500C. It explains how we have identified the three types of water discussed in the Summer 2012 edition of our newsletter and the effect they have on using mass gain data to date ceramic material. Air flow and constant conditions of %RH and temperature are all important components of the experimental methodology. Further papers are planned to discuss these issues in more depth.

Moira Wilson meeting with Bryan Sitch, Deputy Head of Collections and Curator of Archaeology at the Manchester Museum, They are examining ceramic material recovered from the excavation which uncovered the Manchester Word Square.

RHX across the Atlantic

The Manchester contingent of Team RHX had the pleasure of meeting with one our American counterparts, Professor Tim Scarlett from Michigan Technology University. Professor Scarlett is leading an American-based team who are also researching RHX dating. He was visiting the UK for the Society for Historical Archaeology conference in Leicester this January and made time to stop by and visit Manchester during his stay.
It does not apply to either the process of rehydration nor the moisture uptake of any other components in the ceramic matrix, for example calcite or sand. These other components will not gain mass in the same manner but will contribute to the empirical measurements of mass. Both papers present fascinating research on the mineralogy of Davenport ceramics and we are extremely encouraged by the work done by the team at MTU. Particularly their recent paper Effect of Humidity Instability on Rehydroxylation in Fired Clay Ceramics (doi: 10.1111/jace.12262). Since then Professor Scarlett has gone on to secure funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue working on RHX dating but to extend it to a much larger collaborative project. The purpose of the NSF funded project is to allow his team at Michigan Technological University to coordinate an experiment involving different international teams of faculty and students (Michigan Technological University, Arizona State University, California State University and Tel Aviv University). The University of Manchester has been named collaborators offering support towards establishing protocols and interpreting results. We have already provided samples of material we have analysed and are looking forward to offering our support to this project.

Left to right: Margaret Carter, Tim Scarlett, Moira Wilson and Sarah-Jane Clelland

Professor Scarlett has been an enthusiastic supporter of RHX dating since the publication of the first dating results on archaeological material back in 2009. He immediately challenged three Michigan
Technological University students, Helen Ranck, Patrick Bowen, and Jessica Beck, with replicating the technique, with the help of the associated professor in MTUs Department of Material Science and Engineering, Jaroslaw Drelich. The results of these students work is now published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society in a paper entitled Rehydration/ Rehydroxylation Kinetics of Reheating XIX-Century Davenport (Utah) Ceramic (doi:10.1111/j.15512916.2011.04451.x). The MTU team have take a different approach to that used at Manchester, who believe in controlling the temperature and relative humidity to keep them constant, whereas the Michigan teams approach has been to take account of any fluctuations in these variables. More recently the Michigan team have published a second paper in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society, entitled Modeling Rehydration/Rehydroxylation Mass-Gain Curves from Davenport Ceramics (doi: 10.1111/jace.12175). In this paper they question the t1/4 law, however the t1/4 law only applies to the rehydroxylation of fired-clay ceramic.

See Professor Scarletts blog for more details on their ongoing research http://utahpotteryproject.blogspot.co.uk/