Multidisciplinary study on prehistoric pottery from Southeastern Romania

Abstract

Local production or import? This question always raises vivid debates among the archaeologists when they analyse pots and ceramic fragments regardless of the studied period. In the case of pottery from the Eneolithic tell settlement of Sultana-Malu Roşu from South-East Romania, we tried to address this issue through a series of physico-chemical investigations. To reach this goal, we analyzed several shards from two dwellings, as well as clay samples collected from some local deposits from nearby the tell settlement. Petrographic analyses on thin sections and X-ray fluorescence coupled with X-ray diffraction analyses were performed to get mineralogical and chemical information about the archaeological ceramic and local clay samples. One of the aims of this investigation was to explore the connection between Sultana-Malu Roşu pottery and the nearby clay sources, but also to check the local origin of the analyzed pottery. The physico-chemical analyses helped us to identify the procedures and recipes employed by the prehistoric potters, and those data were used in our experimental archaeology approaches when we tried to replicate the prehistoric vessels. The investigation of prehistoric vessels was complemented by imaging analyses using radiography and X-ray computed tomography, in a trial of getting a clearer picture of the chaîne opératoire involved in pottery production process. Moreover, creating experimental replicas, we recorded how pots behave at all stages of manufacturing from modelling to firing. Alongside with the development of a reference database for Gumelnița pottery, an important achievement of this research was that we proved that the vessels from Sultana-Malu Roşu site were made using local clays.