Ceramic Compositional Analysis in Archaeological Perspective

La Explotación Del Alfar De La Troya en El Tiempo: Casualidad O Memoria (Departamento Tinogasta, Catamarca, Argentina)

“…Esto determina que la interpretación de los resultados químicos no sea lineal ni trivial, dado que las relaciones originales de concentración entre varios elementos en la arcilla pueden ser alteradas por la adición de temperante. Esta es la razón de la importancia de conocer la composición mineralógica de la muestra cerámica a ser analizada por AAN (Bishop 1980;Bishop et al 1982;Bishop y Neff 1989;Neff 1993Neff , 1998; entre otros). En general, las concentraciones de elementos traza tienden a ser menos afectados por la inclusión de temperantes como arena, calcita, fragmentos de rocas o vegetales, que por materiales volcánicos o inclusiones arcillosas (Bishop et al 1982).…”

Homol'ovi II: archaeology of an ancestral Hopi village, Arizona

“…Alternative procedures for reinforcing the argument for local manufacture would entail comparison of the Gila Polychrome assemblage from each site with types known to have been manufactured at the sites, or examination of much larger samples of Gila Polychrome sherds and evaluation of the compositional variation in accordance with the Criterion of Abundance (BishOp, Rands, and Holley 1982). The scope of the present study precludes enlarging the sample to the size demanded by these procedures.…”

“…The grouping tendencies within the data matrix were summarized in a dendrogram (Sneath and Sokal 1973: 58-60). Clusters of samples formed in this manner are seldom of sufficient refinement for direct archaeological interpretation, so that additional stages of numerical evaluation must be carried out to approximate the potential for archaeologically meaningful structure within a compositional data matrix (Bishop, Rands, and Holley 1982;Bishop and Neff 1989).…”

Ceramic production, consumption and exchange in the Banda area, Ghana: Insights from compositional analyses

“…The compositional groups identified through INAA cannot be taken as a direct indicator of clay ''sources" since various processes (levigation, mixing of clays, addition of aplastic materials; constraints on procurement) can affect the chemical composition of ceramic fabrics (Arnold et al, 1991;Bishop et al, 1982;Blackman, 1992;Neff et al, 2003:202;Neupert, 2000;Rice, 1996, pp. 168-172).…”