Archaeomagnetic Study of the Edificio de las Columnas Complex, El Tajin, Mesoamerica

We report the initial results of an archaeomagnetic study on ceramic samples from the Edificio de las Columnas architectonic complex, located in the northern sector of El Tajin, an archaeological site. Measurements of magnetic properties include low-field susceptibility, direction and intensity of natural remanent magnetization, magnetic hysteresis, temperature-dependent susceptibility, isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) acquisition curves and back-field demagnetization of saturation IRM. We studied the vectorial composition and stability of remanent magnetization using alternating field and thermal demagnetization. Magnetic carriers are fine-grained titanomagnetites and magnetite with pseudo-single domain states. Characteristic magnetizations are determined from the high-temperature unblocking spectra. Determinants of paleointensity, which meet quality criteria, have high and low values. Possible explanations include alterations during thermal treatments and secondary overprints. The influence of alterations and the multivectorial magnetizations of overlapping spectra require detailed analysis to estimate the paleointensities.