Abstract
Several pottery sherds from the Svilengrad-Brantiite site, Bulgaria, were mineralogically and petrographically analyzed. The aim was to add information to the very scarce material data available for Early Bronze Age pottery in the southeastern Thrace plain, Bulgaria, in order to examine a possible raw-material source of the pottery. The characterization techniques applied were optical microscopy (OM), petrographic microscopy (PM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The pottery samples consisted of two typological groups: a local-made type and a cord-impressed decoration type influenced by foreign cultures. All of the samples were produced from fine clay pastes that had a quite similar composition, with abundant mineral grains of similar mineral composition and fragments of metamorphic and granitic rocks. The chemical compositions of each mineral in the grains and fragments were almost identical, and consistent with those from metamorphic and granitic rocks from the Sakar-Strandja Mountains near the study site. The clay paste compositions corresponded to those of illite/smectite mixed-layer clay minerals or mixtures of illite and smectite, and the clay-mineral species were consistent with those in Miocene–Pleistocene or Holocene sediments surrounding the site.
Highlights
The Upper Thracian Plain in southern Bulgaria is located between the Balkan Mountains and Rhodope Mountains (Figure 1)
Cross sections of all the samples to reddish-brown, and the samples were produced from fine clay samples were were blackblack to reddish-brown, and the samples were produced from fine clay with with relatively large amounts of mineral and rock fragments
The techniques for pottery making, mineral species of the grains, rock types of the fragments, and chemical compositions of clay pastes were nearly the same in both the local EBA2 group pottery and the cord-decorated pottery. These results indicate that both pottery types were produced from the same raw materials and using the same production techniques
Summary
The Upper Thracian Plain in southern Bulgaria is located between the Balkan Mountains and Rhodope Mountains (Figure 1). At the beginning of the third millennium BC, the Yamnaya group moved southwards into the plain from the North Pontic area, interacting with the sedentary groups and assimilating into their communities [1,2]. In connection with this issue, the presence of pottery with cord decoration has often been mentioned [2,3,4,5,6,7]. This style of pottery, has been recovered more frequently from settlement sites other than Yamnaya-style burial mounds (kurgans) in the plain [4,9]; some researchers have argued that indigenous groups in the plain adopted the locally unfamiliar technique of cord-impressed decoration and applied it to pottery [5,7], the details of this adoption are still a matter of debate
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