Ceramic samples, ancient

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... 

AAS has been widely used in Europe to study archaeological ceramics and metals, ranging from Chinese celadons (Pollard and Hatcher 1986) to Roman terra sigillata (Mirti et al. 1990), and from Renin bronzes (Willett and Sayre 2000) and Islamic brasses (Al-Saad 2000) to Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age copper alloys from ancient Israel (Shalev 1995). ICP-AES, using solution sampling, can potentially provide data on a wider range of elements... 

Trace elemental analysis of ancient ceramics has been proven a very useful tool for tracing the circulation of this material. Instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was for years the analytical technique of choice to measure the composition of ceramics because of the large number of elements it could determine and its good sensitivity. Lately, a few publications have shown that laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) could provide similar results as INAA more quickly and at lower cost. A protocol has been developed to determine 51 elements using LA-ICP-MS and tested it on Wari period ceramics previously analyzed using INAA. We show how INAA and LA-ICP-MS analysis lead to the same conclusion in terms of sample groupings. 

The focus of most archaeological ceramic studies has been on provenance or technology. There is also a growing body of specific evidence on how the pottery was used. Chapter 21 by Beck, Smart, and Ossenkop describe the organic tars used to line ancient Mediterranean amphoras. Chapter 21 includes a description of how the residues from amphora contents can be analyzed. As in most cases where unknown organic materials are encountered, the most powerful analytical technique is gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection (GC-MS). This technique is expensive for the analysis of large numbers of samples. 

Data processing, associated with various methods of chemical analysis, can provide a useful tool for the investigation of samples in archeological research. Since the number of samples in archeological work is usually quite limited, SVM should be a new powerful means in the research work of archeological chemistry. In this chapter, archeological research work related to Chinese ancient ceramics will be used as examples in this field. 

Although the archeological problems discussed in this chapter are limited to the archeological problems of Chinese ancient ceramics, it is reasonable to prospect that these methods and strategies described here can be used for other archeological work based on the data analysis of the composition of samples. 

---