Interpreting the Different Scales of Ceramic Paste Compositional Datasets: Archaeological Perspectives and Scales of Analysis.
Yves Monette, University of Montreal, Anthropology, Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact First Author: Yves Monette; yves.monette@umontreal.ca
Previously Published Material: Part of the presentation uses material from my PhD thesis also published in the Journal of Archaeological Science (2007) and one example on fire assay crucibles was published in 2013 in Applied clay Science.
English Abstract:
Over the past 20 years, ceramic paste chemical analysis has become common practice in archaeology. Chemical data obtained through a variety of analytical methods is either used to answer questions of provenance, pin-point the source of raw materials, highlight trading routes and patterns or simply to characterise a ceramic container and reveal some of its deeply buried secrets. The variety of research questions that one can tackle via a robust chemical dataset covers a large angle. Through a selection of case studies making use of geochemical data, this paper explores the multiple scales of analysis of ceramic pastes through wide to narrow archaeological perspectives. The selected examples will present European and colonial ceramic materials dated from the 16th-19th Century time period. Form the broad observations to the very small scale study, we will look at the 16th and 17th centuries worldwide diffusion of highly refractory fire assay crucibles, at the chemical characterization of potters ceramic wastes in a regional perspective, and have a look at an early 19th Century pottery production were multiple production series can be identified. Moving forward in the demonstration, we will highlight the interplay between the scales of analysis and the archaeological perspectives, and their mutual influence on the reality we are trying to capture.
