Analysing technical choices: improving the archaeological classification of Late Republican Black Gloss pottery in north
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Analysing technical choices: improving the archaeological classification of Late Republican Black Gloss pottery in north-eastern Hispania consumption centres Marisol Madrid i Fernández 1
&
Alejandro G. Sinner 2
Received: 20 July 2018 / Accepted: 29 October 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract In order to improve archaeological classifications of Late Republican Black Gloss pottery, an assemblage from two consumption sites in north-eastern Hispania has been physicochemically characterized to identify its provenance and to gain an idea of its manufacture process. The study has been organized according to a multiphase sampling (Buxeda i Garrigós and Madrid i Fernández 2016, 20). In the first phase, chemical characterization by means of wavelength-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (WDXRF) and mineralogical characterization by means of X-ray diffraction (XRD) were performed. In the next phase, a subsample was microstructurally characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thanks to which the sintering/vitrification stage of the matrix and the gloss was determined. The combination of both disciplines, archaeology and archaeometry, enables us to identify four meaningful ceramic groups: Campanian A, Cales 1, 2 and 3. The study also allowed us to infer that all of them must be related to the Campanian region and assignable to three different chronological periods. The Campanian region thus seems to have been the primary source that supplied the settlements considered. The study also allows us to appreciate that the classification criteria used by the archaeologists working at those sites reflect the technical choices made by the potters and that, in many cases, they can only be detected and therefore interpreted by means of archaeometry. Keywords Campanian A . Campanian B . Middle Cales . Late Cales . Hispania . Archaeometry
Introduction and objectives This article focuses on Late Republican Black Gloss pottery from the ancient sites of Ilduro and Iluro (in the modern-day municipalities of Cabrera de Mar and Mataró), located in the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula. The study integrates archaeological analyses and archaeometric research in order to develop a more accurate way to classify ceramics and to relate them to their areas of provenance. At the same time, the study of some aspects of the manufacturing process is in fact a procedure of reverse methodology that will provide a * Marisol Madrid i Fernández [email protected] 1
Cultura Material i Arqueometria UB (ARQUB, GRACPE), Departament d’Història i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona, C/ de Montalegre, 6, 08001 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
2
Department of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Road (Ring Road), Victoria, BC V8P 5C2, Canada
scientific explanation to why archaeologists participating in the excavations at Ilduro and Iluro classify the pottery in one way or another. The study is part of a wider project focusing on some complex domestic spaces of a Late Repub
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