Chemical Characterization and Statistical Multivariate Analysis of Ancient Pottery From Messina, Catania, Lentini and Siracusa (Sicily)*

Abstract

This paper presents the chemical characterization of 79 fragments of Archaic and Hellenistic fine‐grained pottery from archaeological sites in Messina, Catania, Lentini and Siracusa (Sicily). The sherds were classified as ‘calcidian’, ‘banded’, ‘unvarnished’ and ‘black varnished’ pottery. The major and trace elements identified by X‐ray fluorescence (XRF) were statistically elaborated using the method proposed by J. Aitchinson in 1986 for the analysis of compositional data. From cluster analyses using element/SiO2 log‐ratios, it was possible to group the pottery found in Catania, Lentini and Siracusa into highly linked clusters. Conversely, the Messina pottery was divided into two clearly distinct groups. With the aim of identifying any possible mineralogical differences between the two Messina groups, Fourier transform infrared (FT–IR) absorption measurements were made, showing only quantitative differences in plagioclase and muscovite. The specific groups of pottery with restricted chemical compositions are considered to be of local production, also on the basis of archaeological and petrographic evidence.

Characterization of Iron age pottery from eastern Turkey by laser- induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS)

“…On the other hand, since potters tend to process these raw materials, for instance by mixing different kinds of clay or mixing clays with crushed rocks, the composition of a ceramic sherd would also highlight the technological choices the potter made for the production of their pottery. In the case of elemental composition, the most widely used techniques are neutron activation analysis (NAA) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy (Tsolakidou and Kilikoglou, 2002;Glascock et al, 2004;Barone et al, 2005;Padilla et al, 2006).…”

Petro-archaeometric characterization of potteries from a kiln in Adrano, Sicily

“…The discovery of a large number of kilns in Sicily and the presence of several clay formations suitable for ceramic manufacturing [2] suggests a prosperous production of potteries in ancient times. For these reasons, much research has been performed in recent years both on clays sediments [3][4][5] and kilns materials [6][7][8][9][10] with the aim of highlighting the features of Sicilian productions.…”

A volcanic inclusions based approach for provenance studies of archaeological ceramics: application to pottery from southern Italy

“…Hyblean two representative samples from S. Agata al Carcere also ascribes them to the Etnean area, providing new data to the hypothesis of a production persistence in Catania, previously recognised for the Greek period by Barone et al (2005). As regards the sherds from Messina, most of them consists of Greek-Italic amphorae (together with a small number of Richborough 527 and ''orlo a quarto di cerchio'' samples), whose productive centres are still unknown at present.…”

“…Many papers on the archaeometric study of ancient pottery from this area can be found in the literature (Agodi et al, 1998(Agodi et al, , 2000Barone et al, 2005;Barra Bagnasco et al, 2001;Barrese et al, 2003;Eramo et al, 2004;Iliopoulos et al, 2002;Laviano and Muntoni, 2003;Levi, 1999;Lombardo et al, 2000;Montana et al, 2003). However, attributions of provenance after petro-chemical characterisation are in many cases uncertain, due to: (a) the frequent lack of literature data on clayey sediments outcropping near the potential productive sites; (b) the use of raw materials which are, in some cases, compositionally similar on a large geographic scale (e.g.…”