Archeological ceramic artifacts characterization through computed microtomography and X-ray fluorescence

摘要

The analysis of ceramic materials has been proven to be an indispensable tool for indirectly approaching past people and societies through their cultural remnants, allowing inferences about their technology, and their interactionwith their surrounding physical and social environments. Pottery products acquire their characteristic properties during the manufacture process. Compositional (mineralogical and chemical) and microstructural analyses have become an integral part of interdisciplinary archaeological research, underlining the importance of compositional and technological comparative studies. As damages must be avoided to the archeological artifacts under study, nondestructivity is an essential requirement for the scientific methods operating in this research field. Therefore, the aim of this publication is to correlate 2 nondestructive techniques, namely, computed microtomography and X-ray microfluorescence in the structural characterization and investigation of the elemental composition of ceramic samples from 2 different Brazilian archaeological sites. Computed microtomography allowed to differentiate the various materials with different densities that compose the samples. These materials had their elemental composition revealed by X-ray microfluorescence technique, where several tempers used during the manufacturing process were identified. Copyright (C) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.