engleski

Bronze Age Pottery from central Dalmatia – archaeometric approach

The Bronze Age pottery in Dalmatia is still a relatively unexplored area. Although ceramic finds are present on many archaeological sites, pottery still represents a data set with a mostly incomplete stratigraphic context, usually processed selectively and in an unsystematized manner using the traditional approach. This resulted in a lack of research questions and challenges. However, questions focused on the technology of production, use, and distribution of ceramics have the potential to provide a new research direction that will ultimately enable a better understanding of the everyday life of Bronze Age communities of Dalmatia. Therefore, this research is focused on the study of pottery raw materials from which ceramic vessels were made. This paper presents the results of archaeometric analysis of pottery from six Bronze Age sites in the area of Trogir, i.e. central Dalmatia. A mineralogical-petrographic analysis of 38 thin sections of ceramics was carried out using the method of optical microscopy, while the mineral composition of a smaller number of samples was determined using the X-ray powder diffraction method. The research provided data on the characteristics of the clay raw material, data on the type and proportion of non-plastic tempers intentionally added to the clay, as well as information on the production techniques and firing temperatures. Research has shown that Bronze Age potters used two types of non-plastic temper material, crushed calcite, and grog. The analysis of the results indicates technological differences, especially in the choice of tempering material, between ceramics of the early and probably middle Bronze Age compared to ceramics dated to the late Bronze and early Iron Age in the area of central Dalmatia.

archaeometry, pottery, technology, raw material, central Dalmatia, bronze age

nije evidentirano