Portuguese 16th to Early 18th Century tin Glazed Ceramics Found at the Tagus Estuary Saltpans

Abstract

as the Tagus estuary, Setúbal and Aveiro among others [1][2][3][4][5]. This was the time when Portugal became a global empire with contacts, settlements and colonies located from Japan to Brazil initiating a global trade of products originating in Africa, South America and Asia and re-exporting those goods to other countries in Europe [7][8][9]. Salt was also a major asset in this global strategy since it was fundamental in the preservation of food on board of the Portuguese ships [1,2]. AbstractsSalt was extracted from saltpans, in the South shore of Tagus River by evaporation of the salted sea water which penetrates into the estuary. The walls and the bottom of those saltpans were made of local clays to retain the sea water, and ceramic sherds have been used to endure those walls and also to allow people to walk on the saltpans' walls. Those sherds constitute an example of the ceramics production in Lisbon workshops, starting in the mid-16 th century and reaching high levels of quality in the 17 th and 18 th century.A detailed archaeometric study of 14 selected sherds dated from the 16 th to the early 18 th century has been made and the conjugation of the information provided by the micro-Raman, XRD and XRF experiments for those sherds and clays collected locally, allowed us the characterisation of the Lisbon ceramics in that period.Three main groups could be identified in the ceramic bodies; all made with locally collected clays of Miocene origin. In the first group, the potters used raw materials from the clay sources located at Santa Catarina area in Lisbon, most probably mixed with Lapa clays, which were fired at a high temperatures, ranging from 850ºC to 950ºC. Gehlenite and quartz are the dominant minerals of these ceramic bodies. In the second and third groups of Lisbon ceramic bodies, made with Prazeres clays, diopside was also detected but with variable amounts of gehlenite. Clay formations mineralogy mainly include kaolinite, muscovite/illite, quartz, calcite, and feldspars (albite and microcline).

Tradition Unveiled: Pottery Production in the Brazilian Kadiweu Culture

“…The ethnographic literature concerning the survey and production of the Kadiweu ceramics is exhaustive [7][8][9], while a scientific characterization has never been carried out. In the last decades, a multi-analytical approach has been efficiently used for deep characterization of ancient pottery [10][11][12][13][14], taking care of their uniqueness by minimum sampling. In this work, UV Fluorescence was performed first, to evaluate the presence of nonoriginal substances (repainting and restoration products) and thus define the best sampling strategy.…”