One problem with me and my brain trust is that we are all a bit old. When it comes to trying to detect low concentrations of mercury (i.e. contact with a bowl from two thousand years ago,) the best we can think of is gas chromatography. This is about one step up from swabbing with reagents and hoping to see a color change.
A little back and forth with an actual archeologist reveals that the current art is portable x-ray fluorescence. The instrument is the size of a hand-drill, and looks a bit like a Star Trek phasor. Some more back and forth with an XRF/pottery expert confirms this is the right tool. Now I just need to find one in New York.
P.S. These blog posts are lagging realtime by a couple of weeks. I'm trying to keep the chronology roughly straight rather than posting up-to-the minute results.
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