The Story of Obsidian

Well, no, not that Obsidian. We're talking about his namesake. The volcanic rock that apparently was the subject of a recent lecture by an archaeologist at the University of Oregon.

By a special X-ray procedure archaeologists can match the mineral composition to a specific volcanic source in the Western United States. "And that allows us to track each individual artifact back to the exact location where it came from," he said. "And it's not uncommon in a particular site to find up to 30 or 40 obsidian sources represented there."

Crazy. But hey, it's black. And that's our jurisdiction.

Found via ArchaeoBlog.