Application of multivariate statistical methods to classify archaeological pottery from Tel-Alramad site, Syria, based on x-ray fluorescence analysis

Abstract

Radioisotope x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis has been utilized to determine the elemental composition of 55 archaeological pottery samples by the determination of 17 chemical elements. Fifty-four of them came from the Tel-Alramad site in Katana town, near Damascus city, Syria, and one sample came from Brazil. The XRF results have been processed using two multivariate statistical methods, cluster and factor analysis, in order to determine similarities and correlation between the selected samples based on their elemental composition. The methodology successfully separates the samples where four distinct chemical groups were identified.

PIXE-RBS analysis on potteries unearthed from Lijiaba Site

“…Samples with the similar factor score patterns can be grouped together into particular categories. This method was also applied in many archeological studies similar to this paper [10,11,19]. Comparing with other multivariate statistical methods commonly used in archeology field, such as the cluster analysis, we preferred the factor analysis because it was more visual and concise while cluster analysis couldn't give more information than factor analysis in our study.…”

Multivariate Statistical Analysis of Phyllite Samples Based on Chemical (XRF) and Mineralogical Data by XRD

“…The XRF and XRD concentrations became logarithmic values to compensate the differences in magnitude between majority and minority values when calculating similarity coefficients [6,27]. In the statistical analyses the concentrations of microelements Lu and Tm were not taken into account because it was impossible to determine them in any of the samples.…”

Application of X‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy to provenance studies of Algerian archaeological pottery

“…Several techniques can be exploited for this aim, such as atomic emission spectroscopy, proton‐induced X‐ray emission, inductively coupled plasma, neutron activation analysis, and Raman and infrared spectroscopy . Also X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) has been used, mostly on ground ceramics, representative of the whole object . Thanks to the development of portable XRF, this technique is particularly suitable to detect the chemical elements of archaeological unmovable objects.…”

“…[8] Also X-ray fluorescence (XRF) [9,10] has been used, mostly on ground ceramics, representative of the whole object. [11][12][13] Thanks to the development of portable XRF, [6][7][8][9] this technique is particularly suitable to detect the chemical elements of archaeological unmovable objects.…”