Title of Special Issue: International Symposium on Archaeometry 2016 (Kalamata, Greece): Proceedings

The International Symposium on Archaeometry (ISA) is a biennial meeting organized to promote the development and use of scientific techniques in order to extract archaeological and historical information from the cultural heritage and the paleoenvironment. ISA is a unique symposium as it provides the only international forum for all activities in Archaeological Sciences, both individually and integrated. It involves all natural sciences and all types of objects and materials related with human activity. The beginning of the ISA can be retraced as early as to the 1960s, when the applications of natural sciences in archaeology started to gain more and more importance. During the early years the Symposium was organized in Oxford and the main focus of the meetings was on archaeological prospection by geophysical methods. Since 1976 it started travelling all over the World. The topics now include research and applications in scientific dating, geophysical methods, field studies, palaeoenvironment, biomaterials, ceramics, glass, vitreous materials, metals, lithics, plasters, pigments, textiles, paper, and so on. The 41 Symposium, the proceedings of which are presented in this volume was organized in May 15-21, 2016 at the city of Kalamata in Greece by Professor Nikos Zacharias and his team of the Department of History, Archaeology and Cultural Resources Management, The University of Peloponnese. They did an excellent job in organizing this global gathering of all Archaeological Science experts. The participation was very high reaching a number of over 500, specialists in different topics, scholars and students. The papers presented at the Symposium were both in oral and poster form, equally interesting and stimulating. The participants enjoyed the sea front of Kalamata, music in the city and an excursion to Ancient Messene. As it is usually the case not all papers presented at the Symposium were submitted for publication in the Proceedings. Hence, this ISA 2016 Proceedings volume presents a selection of papers submitted by the authors, which are nevertheless characteristic of most subjects of the Symposium. All papers submitted went a peer reviewing process by a team of international and independent reviewers and those finally accepted are published in this volume. The subjects covered in this meeting were generally grouped in the following topics which form the regular and special sessions in which both oral and poster papers were presented: