ASMOSIA, the Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones In Antiquity, was founded at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop held May 9-13, 1988, in Il Ciocco, near Lucca, Italy. The Workshop was entitled, "Marble in Ancient Greece and Rome: Geology, Quarries, Commerce, Artifacts" and was attended by fifty persons representing many varied professions: physical scientists working in archaeometry, archaeologists, art historians, and conservators. It was organized by Marc Waelkens and Norman Herz with the avowed goal of encouraging collaborative projects among scientists, art historians and others in order to better understand the problems associated with ancient man's use of stone. Meeting on a two and one half year schedule: the second meeting was held October 16-20, 1990 in Leuven, Belgium; the third May 17-19, 1993, in Athens, Greece; the fourth October 9-13, 1995 in Bordeaux, France; the fifth June 11-15, 1998, in Boston, USA; the sixth June 15-18, 2000 in Venice, Italy; and the seventh and most recent September 15-20, 2003 in Limenas on the Island of Thasos, Greece. Membership in ASMOSIA has grown over four-fold, from under 50 in 1988 to about 250 now and representing 25 countries. Publications include the proceedings for each meeting as well as the currently twice-yearly ASMOSIA Newsletter.

The publications have been well received by both the art historical/archaeological/museum communities as well as the scientific, and have helped inspire increasing interdisciplinary cooperation. Since previous to ASMOSIA, such cooperation was minimal, this has indeed been a great accomplishment. We have also been fortunate in receiving financial support for our meetings and publications from national and international agencies, such as NATO, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

The aim of AMOSIA is clear: to unite archaeometry closely with archaeology. A practicing archaeometrist is an accomplished scientist with a hazy knowledge of archaeology; the archaeologists should understand enough about the physical sciences to suggest methods and to question alleged precise scientific measurements. The happy result of a knowledgeable archaeologist-scientist pair is that each will know enough about the discipline of the other to identify meaningful problems and then suggest methods of analysis and interpretations to test possible solutions. The archaeologist should learn to question scientific methods that yield results with high precision but low accuracy. The archaeologist need not know how to operate a stable isotopic ratio mass spectrometer nor measure bursts of neutron activity, but should know enough about scientific techniques not to be intimidated by his fancy talking colleague. And the archaeometrist should always strive to keep the archaeologist "honest". ASMOSIA is helping to insure a fruitful future for the archaeometrist-archaeologist pair by offering them the means to communicate with each other and the medium to disseminate the results of their collaboration.

Norman Herz
First Past-President of ASMOSIA

| 03.23.2007 |