Connecting red stone artifacts recovered from archaeological sites with the location of their source materials has been somewhat problematic. Sourcing an artifact, that is, identifying the original source of the raw materials that make up any artifact, provides information concerning the mobility of the artifact maker, or the breadth of the trade network that a maker has access to.
Fortunately, minimally destructive (only a tiny portion of the object needs to be destroyed) techniques for studying the mineral composition of artifacts have been developed, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), coupled with sequential dissolution analysis (SDA) and inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy (ICP). Nondestructive techniques such as PIMA (portable infrared mineral analyzer) spectroscopic analysis have also been developed, and used with considerable success.
What the results of these studies have done, however, is overthrown some long-held ideas about the quarries and trading networks of North America's largest prehistoric societies.
Sources
Emerson TE, Farnsworth KB, Wisseman SU, and Hughes RE. 2013. The allure of the exotic: reexamining the use of local and distant pipestone quarries in Ohio Hopewell pipe caches. American Antiquity in press.
Emerson TE, and Hughes RE. 2000. Figurines, flint clay sourcing, the Ozark highlands, and Cahokian acquisition. American Antiquity 65(1):79-101.
Emerson TE, Hughes RE, Hynes MR, and Wisseman SU. 2003. The sourcing and interpretation of Cahokia-style figurines in the Trans-Mississippi south and southeast. American Antiquity 68(2):287-313.
Wisseman SU, Emerson TE, Hughes RE, and Farnsworth KB. 2011. Provenance studies of midwestern pipestones using a portable infrared spectrometer. Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Archaeometry, 13th-16th May 2008, Siena, Italy: Springer. p 335.
