About this Research Topic
The mineralogical-petrographic and chemical characterization of the ceramics provides important information on the manufacturing of the vessels, therefore on the raw materials, on the processing and cooking method, and on specific pottery wares in the territory. In fact, ceramic production can be local or come from other geographical areas and this allows us to open hypotheses on economic, commercial, political, and cultural relationships between different geographical areas.
The composition of ancient pottery may contain both natural inclusions and temper, i.e. non-plastic material such as sand, shell, pulverized minerals and vegetable materials, added with the aim of improving its workability and cooking properties, as well as the duration of the fired product. The characterisation of different pottery classes will be explored through archaeometric analyses, such as petrographic examination (PE), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and the inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) also coupled with laser ablation (LA-ICP-MS).
The study of pottery will be integrated with the analysis of use-wear traces and Organic Residue Analyses (ORA) with gas chromatography techniques (such as GC-FID, GC-C-IRMS and GC-MS) and FT-IR spectroscopy, to fully exploit their informative potential. Organic residues are a complex mixture of compounds absorbed into a porous ceramic, preserving a part of the absorbed residues from decay and microbial attack. The analysis of organic residues contributed to the identification of the ancient content of ceramics and therefore of its use and function getting information about i) commodity use (diet, subsistence, technology and ritual use); ii) relationships between form and function; iii) methods of cooking food; iv) post-firing treatments and, v) animal management.
In general, these studies have been applied to the early spread of specific foods of animal (terrestrial an aquatic resources and bee products) and botanical (vegetables, cereals and fruits) sources and fermented beverages, such as wine, beer and chocolate. Recently, the use of GC coupled to a high-resolution quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometer (GC-Q-TOF MS) or coupled with orbitrap mass spectrometer (GC-HRMS (Q-Orbitrap) allow us to detect more easily biomarkers of these compounds This instrumentation in recent years lead to increased sensitivities and an improved capacity to resolve the broad spectrum of biomolecular components.. This section welcomes the submission of original research where a chemometric approach is used to solve relevant problems in chemistry and to extract information from chemical data.
Contributions describing new theoretical, methodological and applied research with particular attention to the chemistry and to the mineralogic-petography applied to archaeological ceramic finds are welcome.
The composition of ancient pottery may contain both natural inclusions and temper, i.e. non-plastic material such as sand, shell, pulverized minerals and vegetable materials, added with the aim of improving its workability and cooking properties, as well as the duration of the fired product. The characterisation of different pottery classes will be explored through archaeometric analyses, such as petrographic examination (PE), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscope coupled with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and the inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) also coupled with laser ablation (LA-ICP-MS).
The study of pottery will be integrated with the analysis of use-wear traces and Organic Residue Analyses (ORA) with gas chromatography techniques (such as GC-FID, GC-C-IRMS and GC-MS) and FT-IR spectroscopy, to fully exploit their informative potential. Organic residues are a complex mixture of compounds absorbed into a porous ceramic, preserving a part of the absorbed residues from decay and microbial attack. The analysis of organic residues contributed to the identification of the ancient content of ceramics and therefore of its use and function getting information about i) commodity use (diet, subsistence, technology and ritual use); ii) relationships between form and function; iii) methods of cooking food; iv) post-firing treatments and, v) animal management.
In general, these studies have been applied to the early spread of specific foods of animal (terrestrial an aquatic resources and bee products) and botanical (vegetables, cereals and fruits) sources and fermented beverages, such as wine, beer and chocolate. Recently, the use of GC coupled to a high-resolution quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometer (GC-Q-TOF MS) or coupled with orbitrap mass spectrometer (GC-HRMS (Q-Orbitrap) allow us to detect more easily biomarkers of these compounds This instrumentation in recent years lead to increased sensitivities and an improved capacity to resolve the broad spectrum of biomolecular components.. This section welcomes the submission of original research where a chemometric approach is used to solve relevant problems in chemistry and to extract information from chemical data.
Contributions describing new theoretical, methodological and applied research with particular attention to the chemistry and to the mineralogic-petography applied to archaeological ceramic finds are welcome.
Keywords: Organic residue, archeological ceramics, cooking/heating experiments, vessels, resins, lipids, wine markers, Infrared spectroscopy; Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry; Stable carbon isotopes; d13C values; Diet; aDNA; Archaeobotany, LA-ICP-MS; ICP-MS; SE
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