Archeointensity study on baked clay samples taken from the reconstructed ancient kiln: implication for validity of the Tsunakawa-Shaw paleointensity method

Abstract

In 1972, a reconstruction experiment of a kiln had been done to reproduce an excavated kiln of the seventh century in Japan. Baked clay samples were taken from the floor surface and −20 cm level, and they have been stored after determinations of the paleomagnetic directions by partial alternating field demagnetizations. We recently applied the Tsunakawa-Shaw method to the samples to assess how reliable archeointensity results are obtained from the samples. A suite of the rock magnetic experiments and the scanning electron microscope observations elucidate that dominant magnetic carriers of the floor surface samples are Ti-poor titanomagnetite grains in approximately 10 nm size with single-domain and/or super-paramagnetic states, whereas contributions of multi-domain grains seem to be relatively large for the −20-cm level samples. From the floor surface samples, six out of the eight successful results were obtained and they give an average of 47.3 μT with a standard deviation of 2.2 μT. This is fairly consistent with the in situ geomagnetic field of 46.4 μT at the time of the reconstruction. They are obtained with a built-in anisotropy correction using anhysteretic remanent magnetization and without any cooling rate corrections. In contrast, only one out of four was successful from the −20-cm level samples. It yields an archeointensity of 31.6 μT, which is inconsistent with the in situ geomagnetic field. Considering from the in situ temperature record during the firing of the kiln and the unblocking temperature spectra of the samples, the floor surface samples acquired full thermoremanent magnetizations (TRMs) as their natural remanent magnetizations whereas the −20-cm level samples only acquired partial TRMs, and these differences probably cause the difference in the archeointensity results between the two sample groups. For archeointensity researches, baked clay samples from a kiln floor are considered to be ideal materials.