Microscopic Mapping of Technological Choice: The Use of SEM-EDS with QEMSCAN on Ceramic Materials

Summary

As instrumentation and software packages become increasingly sophisticated, the microscopic world of material culture comes ever more clearly into focus. In doing so, however, we run the risk of privileging the mineral and the elemental above the human, those complex makers and users of ancient artefacts. It would seem, then, that the importance of bridging analytical scales remains as pertinent now as when David Peacock first critiqued the use of mineralogical and chemical techniques for analysing ancient pottery in 1970. Almost 40 years later, a technique has appeared that allows precisely this – an ability to move from object to sherd, from mineral to provenance and from texture to technological choice – automated scanning electron microscopy with linked energy dispersive spectrometers (SEM-EDS) and QEMSCAN imaging software. This paper highlights the seamless combination of textural and mineralogical data that can be gained from using this technique on ancient ceramic material, using the Bronze Age wares of Miletus in western Anatolia as a case study. We discuss the potential to identify specific technological choices within the production sequence of Milesian ceramic vessels using false colour mineralogical maps of ceramic sections.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Exploring the Microscale: Advances and Novel Applications of Microscopy for Archaeological Materials

Keywords

Spatial Coverage