Archaeological analysis of Roman glass excavated from Zadar, Croatia, by a newly developed portable XRF spectrometer for glass

Abstract

A newly developed portable x‐ray fluorescence spectrometer has been evaluated through the onsite and nondestructive analyses of 109 Roman glass artifacts excavated at a Roman cemetery found in Zadar, Croatia. The spectrometer has been designed for on‐site analysis of archaeological glass objects. The instrument consists of an x‐ray tube with a Pd target operated at up to 40 kV, silicon drift detector (SDD) with a polymer window, and an enlargeable vacuum sampling chamber. With this system, quantitative analysis of the light elements such as Na and Mg that are important components of glass, as well as heavy trace elements, was successfully carried out. The obtained results evidenced the use of Natron as fluxing agent with alkali contents of 14–22 wt% Na2O, 0.5 wt% MgO and 1.2 wt% Al2O3. In addition, it was found that the differences in the use of Mn and/or Sb as decolorizing agent in colorless bell‐shaped flasks collected from 10 different localities along the coast of Croatia comparing with the same type flasks excavated from Zadar. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Change in chemical composition of early Islamic glass excavated in Raya,Sinai Peninsula, Egypt: on-site analyses using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer

“…This spectrometer was newly developed by our laboratory in cooperation with OURSTEX Co., Ltd. (Nakai et al, in press;Tantrakarn et al, 2009). It has a palladium (Pd) tube as its X-ray source.…”

“…The nondestructive on-site analyses of archaeological objects using this portable XRF spectrometer have been performed at North Saqqara in Egypt and Zadar in Croatia, etc., beside the Raya site. In 2006, a newly developed XRF for light element analysis, OURSTEX 100FA II-L, was used for the on-site analyses (Kato et al, 2007b;Tantrakarn et al, 2009). The aim of this study is to clarify the chemical composition of the early Islamic glass objects from the Raya site in order to better understand glass trading in the Islamic world.…”

Transitions in Islamic plant-ash glass vessels: on-site chemical analyses conducted at the Raya/al-Tur area on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt

“…The analytical procedures and conditions are described elsewhere (Kato et al, 2009a;Tantrakarn et al, 2009). Standard glass samples (NIST SRM610, 612, 621, 1412, 1830, 1831 and 15 synthetic glasses that had been quantitatively analyzed using inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) by the authors were used to generate calibration curves for quantitative analyses and to estimate precision and accuracy.…”

Transition in the use of cobalt-blue colorant in the New Kingdom of Egypt

“…We previously used several prototypes of this spectrometer in analytical studies of archaeological artifacts, especially ancient glass (Nakai et al, 2005in press;Hokura et al, 2009;Tantrakarn et al, 2009;Kato et al, 2009Kato et al, , 2010Abe et al, 2009). This spectrometer is composed of a high-voltage power supply, a counting circuit controller, a spectrometer, a small vacuum pump, a laptop computer, and an external water-cooling system.…”