Neutron Activation Analysis of Late Sixth Century bce Pottery from the Pointe Lequin 1A Shipwreck and Massalia, and Comparison with the Cala Sant Vicenç Shipwreck and Emporion

Abstract

This paper presents the results of neutron activation analyses of pottery samples from four late sixth century bce sites in the Western Mediterranean: the Pointe Lequin 1A shipwreck, the Bourse site in Marseilles, the Greek colony of Emporion and the Cala Sant Vicenç shipwreck, with the goal of locating the production of a commonly found cup type, the so‐called ‘Ionian’ cup, type B2. The NAA results show three distinct compositional groups, although the location of production could not be determined with certainty. The results also show that submarine diagenesis of pottery samples does not necessarily render them incomparable with samples from terrestrial sites.