A new approach for archaeological ceramics analysis using total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometry

The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of a new quantitative analysis method in case total reflection X-ray fluorescence (TXRF) is applied to archaeological ceramics. This method is alternative to and simpler than traditional TXRF quantitative analysis or typical techniques of elemental analysis such as atomic emission and absorption spectrometry (AES and AAS) which implies the chemical digestion of the sample. A new procedure which allows to obtain an homogeneous sample has been successfully applied. This way it was possible to obtain quantitative results for the elements present in the sedimentation obtained from a suspension prepared with the ceramic sample, by resorting to addition of an internal standard. The archaeological ceramic shards have been also chemically digested and analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry, AES with flame atomization and electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry. The quantitative data obtained by means of both TXRF, AAS and AES were compared and worked out by multivariate statistical techniques, such as principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis in order to achieve information concerning pottery provenance.