Background: An ancient pottery from the La Candelaria archaeological site, Santa Helena del Opón, Santander (Colombia) has been investigated by several analytical techniques. Evidences of high temperature mineral phases and high degrees of vitrification indicate that the raw clayed paste for manufacture of the ceramic artifacts passed through high firing temperatures with a non-homogeneous firing. Almost all raw materials for manufacture of pottery sherds mainly proceed from the region, which was developed by a culture which through the centuries did not realized substantial changes in their manufacture technology.

A set of selected fragments of pre-Hispanic pottery sherds that were excavated from the Mesa de Los Santos region's archaeological site (Colombia) were investigated by different analytical techniques and principal component and hierarchical cluster analyses. This study is very useful to understand more about the raw materials (and provenance) for ancient pottery production and their manufacturing technology. In addition to establish stratigraphic and anthropological relationships, the pottery sherds were analyzed to determine their mineralogical and chemical composition, as well as their structural characteristics using X-ray powder diffraction, wavelength dispersive X-ray fluorescence, scanning electron microscopy, and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The results indicated that the pre-Hispanic pottery sherds were manufactured using poor carbonates and iron oxide-bearing clays with no significant changes in the technology of manufacture, firing the pastes at the proper temperatures or selecting and processing the raw materials to fulfill their use. The manufacture of pre-Hispanic pottery was probably carried out using local raw materials, compatible with the regional geological context, and the archaeometric study reveals that the pre-Hispanic cultures who lived in this region hardly had access to trade of raw materials.