0000000000620867
AUTHOR
Miguel ÁNgel Cau Ontiveros
The production of traditional building materials in Oristano (Sardinia, Italy)
The study of ceramic-making communities which employ traditional practices can provide insights into the raw materials and techniques used over the centuries in a particular territory. The archaeometric study of ceramic products and of the raw materials used in their production is an effective complement to the existing ethnographic information. This paper focuses on the brick and tile making tradition of Oristano, a town in Central-Western Sardinia (Italy). Applying a combination of techniques, it includes an extensive analysis of traditional handmade and early industrial bricks and tiles, and a study of the local clays that may have been used as raw materials. Although we were unable to s…
Characterisation of clayey raw materials for ceramic manufacture in ancient Sicily
Abstract It is well known that mineralogical, petrographic and chemical analyses can successfully support provenance studies of archaeological ceramics. The characterisation of a ceramic paste, the assessment of its technology of production and its provenance assignment related to a specific production centre or to a geographical and/or compositional space, are all tasks that can be performed even more accurately if the clayey raw materials used in pottery production are also studied. For that reason the identification of the clay deposits exploited in a given ceramic workshop often plays a key role in the archaeometric reconstruction of the production cycle where geology, mineralogy, petro…
Caracterización arqueométrica de cerámicas comunes y de cocina tardoantiguas del asentamiento rural de L?Horta Vella (Bétera, Valencia) : evaluación de posibles producciones regionales e importaciones
Diversos contextos cerámicos recuperados en las excavaciones de L’Horta Vella (Bétera, Valencia) han proporcionado evidencias sobre la ocupación de este asentamiento rural en la Antigüedad Tardía. En este artículo, se presenta un estudio arqueométrico realizado sobre parte de este conjunto cerámico, en particular sobre una serie de cerámicas de cocina y comunes que fueron relacionadas, en un estudio arqueológico inicial, tanto con posibles producciones locales/regionales como con importaciones. Las cerámicas fueron analizadas mediante diversas técnicas arqueométricas para su caracterización petrográfica, mineralógica y química. Los resultados ofrecen información importante sobre su provenie…