Search results for " ARCHAEOMETRY"
showing 10 items of 12 documents
Aspetti tipo-cronologici e archeometrici delle ceramiche africane nel territorio di Cignana (Naro, AG, Sicilia)
2020
Il progetto di ricerca, condotto in cotutela tra l'Università di Palermo e Aix-Marseille Université, si basa sullo studio delle ceramiche africane importate in Sicilia tra la fine del I e il VII secolo d.C.. La ricerca si basa sui frammenti - tutte le classi incluse - raccolti dal gruppo di ricerca di Palermo durante le ricognizioni archeologiche nei dintorni della villa romana di Cignana (Agrigento) e nell'entroterra di Termini Imerese (Palermo). L'approccio multidisciplinare archeologico ed archeometrico, condotto in collaborazione con diversi specialisti di queste discipline, ha permesso di definire l'origine delle diverse produzioni e di riflettere sulla loro circolazione in Sicilia, in…
Archaeometric characterization of late Archaic ceramic from Erice (Sicily) aimed to provenance determination
2019
A set of 20 ceramic samples was autoptically selected from the numerous findings recovered from the stratigraphic excavations of the late Archaic city walls of Erice (western Sicily), in order to be analyzed with archaeometric techniques for provenance determination. The excavations were recently carried out as part of a research project funded by the Freie Universiat Berlin and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Specifically, the ceramic material consists of tableware with a painted geometric decoration of presumed local/regional production, as well as apparently imported black-glazed pottery. Both the categories can be traced back to a chronological period between the second half/last quarter …
Building ceramics: Brick, tile, and clay
2022
Tiles for use in construction were made in quantity at Vagnari, as Alastair Small’s investigations made clear. He uncovered one tile kiln in the vicus area north of the ravine and five south of the ravine that were producing tiles from the 1st to the 4th century AD, although not all at the same time (Small 2011b: 231–64). There may well have been more, as yet undiscovered, kilns in and around the settlement, together with the requisite tile-making provisions, such as drying sheds or yards and large ponds or basins for mixing clay and water. Archaeologically explored and well-preserved tile-making facilities of local and regional importance in northeast Spain give us an idea of the complex p…
LATE ROMAN COOKING WARES FROM NORA (SARDINIA): INTERIM ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ARCHAEOMETRICAL STUDY.
2010
This contribution aims to present the interim results of an archaeological and archaeometric research on the cooking wares from the central quarter of Nora (Cagliari, Sardinia) where a team from the University of Milano identified several Late Roman residences. The morphological analysis of the different groups has put in evidence a low variation of the types except for their size. The archaeometrical data show that most of the analysed materials may correspond to a local or regional production (with certain degree of variation) of cooking wares widely used in Nora in the Late Roman Period. It is important to stress that petrographic analysis shows that the compositional characteristics of …
SEM–EDS ANALYSIS AS A RAPID TOOL FOR DISTINGUISHING CAMPANIAN A WARE AND SICILIAN IMITATIONS
2013
The aim of this work is to examine whether it is possible to find chemical markers that allow a distinction to be made between the imported black glossed ‘Campanian A’ and the Sicilian imitation (end of fourth to first century BC) of these productions by carrying out quantitative chemical microanalysis of the slip using the SEM–EDS technique. The efficiency of the proposed analytical method has been tested on a set of ceramic samples corresponding to Sicilian black gloss imitations whose ceramic body has already been characterized petrographically by thin-section microscopy and chemically by XRF. The analytical data point to Na2O as a suitable chemical marker to distinguish between original…
Integrated analytical methodologies for the study of corrosion processes in archaeological bronzes
2011
Abstract The investigations on structure and micro-chemical composition of archaeological metal alloys are needed in archaeometry. The aim of this study is devoted both to acquire information about their provenance and production technology, and to improve our understanding about the corrosion processes. In this paper we present the study of the corrosion phenomena of bronze samples, laboratory-made according to binary, ternary and quaternary alloys typical of Roman archaeometallurgical production through an integrated methodology based on the use of non or micro invasive physical techniques. Among the analysed samples, two were artificially aged through burial in the archaeological site of…
Petrographic and geochemical characterization of Archaic-Hellenistic tableware production at Solunto, Sicily
2009
A selected assortment of Archaic-Hellenistic tableware samples from Solunto, a Phoenician-Punic site located 20 km east of Palermo (Sicily), has been subjected to thin-section petrography and chemical analysis (XRF). In this settlement several ceramic kilns remained operative over a long time period (7th to 3rd century B.C.). The main goal of this analytical study is to distinguish the ceramics manufactured locally from regional and off-island imports. Analytical results were matched to similar data concerning local natural clay sources and to coeval tableware productions from other sites in the same area. The ceramic pastes used by the ancient craftsmen of Solunto in the case of this class…
Social and technological changes in the ceramic production of the Northern Levant during the LBA/IA transition: New evidence about the Sea People iss…
2019
Abstract The transition from the Late Bronze Age (LBA) to the Iron Age (IA) in the Levant is marked by the collapse of the Egyptian and Hittite empires, which dominated the political scene of the 14th–13th century BCE. The role of the Sea People, groups of migrants who were defeated by the Egyptian king Ramses III around 1175 BCE, is the focal point concerning this period. After the collapse of the LBA empires, written sources disappeared, and the archaeologists’ primary tool to define cultural processes is to analyze the evolution of pottery. Because of this, studies about the distribution of Aegeanizing ceramic production, considered here to have derived from the Sea People culture, can p…
Marble and stone revetment and pavements: Context and provenance
2022
Earlier excavations and survey at Vagnari furnished hardly any evidence for the use of marble at the site, and so the vicus was considered to be a low status settlement, with only a few rooms having been elegant enough to decorate them with marble floors or revetment. The fragments recovered were not analysed scientifically to determine the location of the quarries from which the marbles came. Of particular interest, however, were two small fragments of inscriptions on white marble retrieved from the rubble fill dumped in the 4th century AD in the reservoir. These originally may have been attached, when intact, to votive or funerary monuments, suggesting that the occasional commemorative mo…