Pottery provenance

For the reasons outlined above, outcrops of workable obsidian are relatively few in number and are restricted to areas of geologically recent lava flows. Most sources are therefore reasonably well known, and, because of these constraints, identification of new sources in the eastern Mediterranean region becomes ever more unlikely. This makes the exercise of characterizing archaeological obsidians an attractive proposition, since, unlike potential clay sources for pottery provenance, the existence of completely unknown sources can be (cautiously) ignored. This is, of course, subject to the requirement noted above for more detailed geochemical characterization of existing sources. 

Neff, H. (2001). Synthesising analytical data - spatial results from pottery provenance investigation. In Handook of Archaeological Sciences, ed. Brothwell, D.R. and Pollard, A.M., Wiley, Chichester, pp. 733-747. 

Large-scale pottery provenance studies employing ICP are uncommon. Therefore, most ICP laboratories have not yet developed a definite procedure for such a study including sample preparation, choice of standards for calibration, choice of elements etc. Here there was an attempt to obtain elements that are accurately measured by NAA as well and use well-known international rock standards, so comparison with results of other labs could be made in the future. 

The big problem in using typology to establish pottery provenance stems from the fact that discernible variations in a style are found in pottery from one place. Consequently, there is lack of precision in defining exactly what belongs in a pottery repertory and what should be excluded. Even when artifacts of pottery excavated at difierent places appear to be identical, there is no assurance that they were in fact made in one of the places. 

Glascock,M.D.,Neff,H.,Vaughn,K.J.(2004) Instrumental neutron activation analysis and multivariate statistics for pottery provenance. Hyperfine Interactions, 754(1-4), 95-105. 

Renson, V., Coenaerts, J., Nys, K., Mattielli, N., Astrom, P., and Claeys, P. (2007) Provenance determination of pottery from Hala Sultan Tekke using lead isotopic analysis preliminary results, in Hala Sultan Tekke 12. Tomb 24, Stone Anchors, Faunal Remains and Pottery Provenance, Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology, Vol 45 (12) (eds. P. Astrom and K. Nys), Paul Astroms Forlag, Savedalen, pp. 53-60. 

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). 

Given these requirements, it emerges that a suitable analytical technique for studying provenance should provide relatively rapid results and preferably be nondestructive, enabling determination of each element, and differentiation among a large number of elements in relatively short periods of time. Techniques that fulfill these conditions for studying the provenance of pottery include several spectroscopic techniques, neutron activation and X-rays fluorescence (see Textbox 10). 

Several thousand shards were analyzed in a wide-ranging study intended to evaluate the accuracy obtainable when using neutron activation analysis to establish the provenance of pottery. After determining the relative... 

Mommsen, H. (2001), Provenance determination of pottery by trace element analysis Problems, solutions and applications, /. Radioanal. Nucl. Chem. 247(3), 657-662. 

Catling, H.W., Blin-Stoyle, A.E. and Richards, E.E. (1963). Correlations between composition and provenance of Mycenaean and Minoan pottery. Annual of the British School at Athens 58 94-115. 

Pollard, A.M., Hatcher, H. and Symonds, R.P. (1981). Provenance studies of Rhenish pottery by comparison with terra sigillata. Revue d Archeometrie, Actes due XX Symposium International d Archeometrie, Paris 26-29 Mars 1980, Vol II, 177-185. 

This massive study of prehistoric pottery in the eastern Mediterranean serves to highlight a number of issues relating to the scientific study of provenance, beyond the obvious scientific and archaeological questions of how do the analyses relate to the archaeological question (Wilson and... 

Mommsen, H. (1981). Filters to sort out pottery samples of the same provenance from a data-bank of neutron activation analyses. Archaeometry 23 209-215. 

White, S. R. (1981). The Provenance of Bronze Age pottery from Central and Eastern Greece. Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Bradford, UK. 

Xu, A. W., Wang, C. S., Chi, J. Q., et al. (2001). Preliminary provenance research on Chinese Neolithic pottery Huating (Xinyi County) and three Yellow River Valley sites. Archaeometry 43 35 17. 

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