Archaeomagnetic characterization and possible dating based on archaeointensity values, of prehispanic ceramics from the Nueva Esperanza archaeological site - TCE Sector (Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia)

Abstract

Introduction: The development of archaeometrical research has been characterized by interdisciplinary fields. Thus, different approaches and new subfields of knowledge and applications are created. In the case of geophysics, with particular interest in the geomagnetic field (hereafter GMF), the study of the past magnetic field of the Earth and its evolution, called Palaeomagnetism, gave important information on its history through geological periods. Researchers found out that the principles and methods used in Palaeomagnetism can be applied on archaeological materials, especially those made from baked clay. These methods help to understand better the GMF in recent times, that is around the last 9000 years, with the appearance of artifacts made from baked clay. The geomagnetic information obtained can help to date the last moment when the artifact was heated and cooled. Hence, the studies of archaeomagnetism evolved in the common ground of different disciplines (for an overview see Brown et al.,2021). In the last two decades, a considerable amount of archaeomagnetic studies have been published worldwide, but the majority come from Europe, and in general, the North Hemisphere (Hervé, et al., 2019; Brown et al.,2021). This is a serious disadvantage since it is very important to have a homogeneous distribution of the data if a researcher wants to build reliable models of the geomagnetic field and apply them for archaeological purposes. Even so, in the resent years there has been progress in acquiring data from places all over the world, like Middle East (Gallet, et al., 2015; Shaar, et al., 2016; Ben-Yosef et al., 2017), Africa (Di Chiara, 2020), China (Cai, et al., 2020), South East Asia (Cai, et al., 2021), New Zealand (Turner, et al., 2020), Mesoamerica (Mahgoub, et al, 2019b; García, et al., 2021), South America (Goguitchaichvili, et al., 2019) and the Caribbean (Cejudo, et al., 2019). For the Colombian case, to date, four investigations have been published on archaeomagnetism, specifically on intensity (Berkovich, et al., 2017; Cejudo, et al., 2019; Obregón, et al., 2019; Rojas, et al., 2020). Due to the situation described, these publications take important first steps to understand the characteristics of archaeomagnetic data obtained in northern South America, their relationship with surrounding regions of the continent, the magnetic attributes of the archaeological artifacts, and to establish the interest in the future development of a secular variation curve for the country.