Estimating Earth’s past field strength from individual sources in archaeological ceramics using quantum diamond microscopy
File(s)
Article in press
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
When archaeological ceramics are fired in a kiln and cool, microscopic magnetic minerals can acquire a magnetisation aligned with Earth’s magnetic field, preserving information about its past strength. Conventional palaeomagnetic methods recover this signal from whole samples, but bulk measurements can mix reliable and unreliable recorders, while heating-based experiments may alter the minerals being measured. Here we present a non-heating protocol using quantum diamond microscope measurements of individual magnetic sources in a thin section of an archaeological ceramic. We use magnetic field maps to isolate near-surface magnetic anomalies, recover their magnetic moments, and track their behaviour during controlled laboratory experiments. Selectively recovered directions closely match whole-sample measurements from a cryogenic rock magnetometer. For well-separated, dipole-like sources that pass quality and behaviour filters, estimates of Earth’s past magnetic field strength agree with independent measurements from related samples. These results demonstrate that magnetic microscopy provides a promising route to high-precision micropalaeomagnetic analysis.
Date Issued
2026-06-09
Date Acceptance
2026-05-29
Citation
Communications Earth & Environment, 2026
ISSN
2662-4435
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Communications Earth & Environment
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
10.1038/s43247-026-03725-3
Publication Status
Published online
Date Publish Online
2026-06-09