Mapping Ceramic Compositional Variation and Prehistoric Interaction in Pacific Coastal Guatemala

The influence of different tempers on the composition of pottery

“…A lot of studies have been published on the chemical analysis and provenancing of pottery (e.g. Abbott et al, 2008;Alden et al, 2006;Arnold et al, 2000;Demirci et al, 2004;Hall et al, 2002;Josephs, 2005;Mallory-Greenough et al, 1998;Neff and Bove, 1999;Perlman and Asaro, 1969;Pollard and Hatcher, 1994;Rathossi et al, 2004;Riederer, 2004;Schmitt, 1998;Tite, 2008). However, in most cases, ancient or contemporary pottery, produced under non-standardized conditions was used.…”

Tracing the clay source of Nasca polychrome pottery: results from a preliminary raw material survey

“…In the absence of evidence for workshops, and without a sample of the raw materials available to ancient potters, the explanatory potential of compositional analyses is limited. Indeed, without knowing the distribution of raw materials in the region, aligning the compositional groups found in previous analyses with clays located on the ground is not possible [4,20,21,24,27,38], thus to move forward with investigations, it is imperative to determine the distribution of clays in the region.…”

Testing technological practices: neutron activation analysis of neolithic ceramics from Valencia, Spain

“…Studies of this type have been conducted in a range of cultural contexts and geographic regions (e.g. [19,30,31,42,48,53,54]), and have resulted in a greater understanding of both technological practice and human interaction. Geochemical analysis was chosen here to help illuminate the following question: Did potters choose different raw material sources during the course of the Neolithic mirroring shifts in settlement locations?…”