L'analisi chimica nello studio delle ceramiche archeologiche

As regards archaeological pottery, information about provenance and production technology (for instance, firing temperature) can be deduced from chemical and mineralogical composition.The first part of the work has been devoted to the possibility of applying different techniques both of elemental and mineralogical analysis to the classification of the sherds: i) a method based on the mutual integration of ICP-AES and FTIR analyses, introducing the novelty of a semiquantitative analysis of mineralogical phases obtained by PLS regression; mineralogical and elemental data are then treated by chemometrical tools (PCA and cluster analyses); ii) the possibility of obtaining quantitative non-invasive elemental analysis directly in the museum exploiting ED-XRF analysis; iii) TXRF analysis allowing to avoid chemical digestion of the sample. The second part of the work deals with the classification of five groups of ceramic samples, i.e.: impasto Etruscan pottery from La Castellina, Etruscan pottery and grey bucchero from Tarquinia, Etruscan pottery from Cerveteri kept in the Archaeological Museum in Milan, medieval and Roman pottery from Tarquinia, Euboean pottery from Eretria.