The Roman, Medieval, and Early Modern Potting Site of Dieburg South of Frankfurt/Main, Hesse, Germany, and Its Geochemical Pattern with a Stable Heavy Mineral Anomaly

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

As part of an extended ceramic settlement analysis with ten medieval find complexes in the lower Main depression, we studied Roman and late medieval to early modern pottery from Dieburg (district of Darmstadt), which is the only site with workshop wasters in the larger region. The Dieburg wares exhibit a characteristic anomaly of Ti, Nb, and Zr, which is also found in oil shale sediments (black-pelite/kerogenite) of the Eocene maar lake of Messel, just 6 km to the west of Dieburg. The Messel Maar is one of several volcanoes in a small north-south stretched hill, which separates the lower Main depression from the Rhine rift valley. We used nondestructive XRF for pottery analysis and XRF and XRD for studying clay mineralogy. The late medieval potters were for sure not aware of the potential volcanic origin of their clay, but focused on this low iron, low cation containing raw material for the production of high-quality lead glazed stove tiles and loam slipped tableware, which was traded over a great distance.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Ceramics and Archaeological Sciences 2024

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37775.0