The Distinctive Role of Chemical Composition in Archaeometry. The Case of Apulian Red Figure Pottery

Lorena Carla Giannossa,Annarosa Mangone,Tiziana Forleo

doi:10.3390/app11073073

Lorena Carla Giannossa, Annarosa Mangone + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/app11073073

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Abstract

Correlation of the scientific approach to the archaeological investigation and vice versa is considered, for at least the past 30 years, as the best strategy to answer questions in cultural heritage. Many archaeological queries have merged archaeological and scientific studies and have been carried out with a multidisciplinary approach that uses complementary analytical techniques. Here, we focused our efforts on outlining the strong relevance of elemental composition in chemistry and mineralogical investigations to answer important archaeological questions in the case of Apulian red figure pottery. This ceramic class is the most important quantitative handcraft production group of figured pottery in Magna Grecia and the most widespread and commercialized production from the third quarter of the fifth century to the end of the next century. The results obtained indicate that, by exploring chemical elements in the ceramic mixture, it is possible to extract information about provenance, manufacturing processes, originality and restoration techniques.

Highlights

The great contribution that scientific investigations, when applied to a well-selected and representative sample of finds and conducted according to a correct analytical method, provide to archaeological research is currently well established.In case of ceramic finds, assessing provenance and technological features has almost always been represented as the main goal of archaeometric investigations.Most archaeological questions can be solved using a combined mix of analytical techniques that can provide compositional and structural data about bulk and surfaces
We focused our efforts on outlining the strong relevance of elemental composition in chemistry and mineralogical investigations to answer important archaeological questions in the case of Apulian red figure pottery
Apulian red figure pottery has been extensively investigated by archaeologists and numerous studies are available in the literature

Summary

Introduction

The great contribution that scientific investigations, when applied to a well-selected and representative sample of finds and conducted according to a correct analytical method, provide to archaeological research is currently well established. In case of ceramic finds, assessing provenance and technological features has almost always been represented as the main goal of archaeometric investigations. If objects of a known provenance are not available, it is possible to hypothesize the origin of the finds these, linear principal component analysis (PCA) and clustering analysis (CA and HCA). Apulian red figure pottery has been extensively investigated by archaeologists and numerous studies are available in the literature (please refer to them for more detailed stylistic-typological information). The Apulian red figure class has not been studied as thoroughly as Attic pottery, the picture emerging from archaeometric investigations is of great interest

Analytical Methods and Multivariate Statistical Treatments

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