Ancient pottery study

TABLE 61 Techniques Used for Studying the Firing Conditions of Ancient Pottery... 

Tt is well known that iron is a common constituent of works of art and of artifacts of archaeological interest. This is undoubtedly because of its occurrence in most rocks of the earths crust and in a variety of colored compounds. The chemistry of iron compounds is fairly complex, and the form in which it is eventually found in an object can provide information on the source and the technique of manufacture of that object. Mossbauer effect spectroscopy (MES) is particularly suitable for studying iron and its compounds. Already there are two published reports 1,2) of MES applied to the study of ancient pottery. However, those studies, like most MES work, required sample taking and preparation. We have explored the possibility of nondestructive MES and now report on practicality of this method. Since there are many good descrip-... 

Two groups of workers have used MES to study ancient pottery. In both cases, samples were taken, and transmission spectra were ob-... 

Brooks D, Bieber Jr AM, Harbottle G, Sayre EV (1974) Biblical Studies throu Activation Analysis of Ancient Pottery, in Archaeological Chemistry, (ed. Beck CW) p. 48, Washington, D.C., Amer. Chem. Soc. 

Common ancient ceramic materials often found in archaeological excavations, such as fired brick and pottery, were made mostly from a mixture of a secondary clay and fillers. The nature, composition, and properties of clay have been already discussed the nature of the fillers, the changes undergone by the clay as well as by the fillers during their conversion to ceramics, and the unique properties of ceramic materials, are reviewed in the following pages. Attention is drawn also to studies that provide information on the composition and characteristics of ancient ceramic materials. 

Some of these studies contribute to the understanding of ancient potterymaking techniques, others to learning about the provenance of pottery. The craft aspects of potterymaking, fascinating as they may be in themselves, are, however, outside the scope of this book (Rice 1982). 

The potential for the preservation of lipids is relatively high since by definition they are hydrophobic and not susceptible to hydrolysis by water, unlike most amino acids and DNA. A wide range of fatty acids, sterols, acylglycerols, and wax esters have been identified in visible surface debris on pottery fragments or as residues absorbed into the permeable ceramic matrix. Isolation of lipids from these matrices is achieved by solvent extraction of powdered samples and analysis is often by the powerful and sensitive technique of combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS see Section 8.4). This approach has been successfully used for the identification of ancient lipid residues, contributing to the study of artifact... 

An examination of the potential for provenance studies of variation in mineralogical and chemical composition on very old ceramic assemblages (of ancient Japanese pottery and of Mesoamerican plumbate pottery surfaces) has been performed by LA-ICP-MS. Results suggested that the region s geological complexity may inhibit successful provenance studies of ceramics.9-11... 

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