Abstract
A large sampling of Apulian red-figured pottery fragments (fifth to fourth century BC) coming from Taranto (Italy) was analyzed by a multi-technique approach. The ceramic bodies’ elemental composition has been obtained by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), the mineralogical composition of pastes by polarized-light optical and electron microscopies (OM and SEM-EDS), and X-ray powder diffraction (PXRD). The results obtained from the statistical treatment of compositional data, combined with those driven from mineralogical composition of pastes, allow to formulate hypotheses about the provenance of the objects and the manufacturing tradition of the workshops, starting to make it possible to understand the relationships among ceramic technology, artistic expression, and workshop practice in the samples analyzed.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Dr. Luigi La Rocca (Superintendent for Archaeological Heritage of Apulia), for having authorized this research (register numbers 6074 dated May 17 2012 and 8520 dated July 11 2012) and are grateful to Dr. Antonietta Dell’Aglio and Dr. Amelia d’Amicis (National Archaeological Museum of Taranto—M.Ar.Ta) for providing archeological samples and for their scientific support and fruitful discussion. The authors would like to thank Sr. Amelia d’Amicis also for the stylistic attribution of the samples analyzed and Dr. Italo Muntoni (Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Apulia) for the continuous and constant contribution to the research, in particular during the discussion of results in view of archeological implications and manuscript processing.
This study was financed by the “Laboratorio per lo Sviluppo Integrato delle Scienze e delle Tecnologie dei Materiali Avanzati e per dispositivi innovativi (SISTEMA)” of the University of Bari.
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Giannossa, L.C., Mininni, R.M., Laviano, R. et al. An archaeometric approach to gain knowledge on technology and provenance of Apulian red-figured pottery from Taranto. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 9, 1125–1135 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0345-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-016-0345-9