Archaeometry of Sicilian glazed pottery

Petrographic and chemical analyses of the “ceramic body” of 114 majolica artefacts manufactured in Sicily over a wide time range (16th–-19th century) are presented. All the analysed samples, which belong to museums and private collections, were previously attributed to Sicilian workshops based on stylistic features evaluated by expert historians of art. Unambiguous identification of the production sites of majolica handicrafts in Sicily remains, however, open to question when this relies only on purely stylistic considerations. To this end compositional and/or textural markers have been searched for in the “ceramic body” of the majolica artefacts in order to differentiate between the centre…

Microchemical and microstructural characteristics of medieval and post-medieval ceramic glaze coatings