Multi-Techniques Analysis of Archaeological Pottery-Potential Pitfalls in Interpreting the Results

This article presents the results of an analysis of ceramics from archeological sites. The main goal of the study was to determine the elemental composition of ceramics using XRF. This study was conducted in two stages. The first stage involved the analysis of complete vessels from the museum exhibition. The second involved the interpretation of the results obtained from the first stage. In the second stage, 30 samples obtained by dividing a single fragment of a ceramic vessel were analyzed. The results (results scattered due to material heterogeneity) were compared with the results of analyses of a large group of ceramic samples from a similar period. To supplement the information about the ceramic material studied, destructive analyses were also performed (after grinding the aforementioned 30 samples), namely mineral composition using FTIR (to determine the raw materials) and iron speciation using UV-Vis and HPLC-ICP hrOES (to determine the firing method). The results obtained indicated that limiting the research to the most-used non-destructive procedures in archaeometry can lead to misinterpretation. Although the presented study concerned archaeological objects, it can be considered in the context of research on other materials.