Volcanic obsidian was widely used in ancient times for stone tools, with its highly glassy nature making it sharper than other lithics cutting purposes. In Europe and the Mediterranean, there are just several island sources, a few one inland region, all having been since beginning of Neolithic period, ca. 6000 BCE. Maritime transport necessary access to Italian Greek distribution artifacts over...

This paper presents an experimental and theoretical study of the thermal-runaway instability induced by localized microwaves in basalt stones. This effect leads to the inner melting of the basalt core, and further to its eruption similarly to a volcanic burst. The experiments are conducted in a single-mode cavity at 2.45 GHz, 0.9 kW. The microwave-induced miniature volcano exhibits hotspots, bu...

Recent archaeological research has highlighted the potential role of mobile pastoral groups in diffusion raw materials and technological innovations between southern Caucasus north-western Iran from Neolithic onwards. Two successive projects, PAST-OBS SCOPE, were designed to explore this hypothesis through study obsidian consumption patterns Bronze Age using a flexible analytical strategy that ...