Assessing the Origin of Wares from Sardis through Sr-Pb Isotopic Analysis

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper presents the results of isotopic analysis of ceramic sherds and locally sourced soils that contribute to our understanding of the origin of ancient Sardis’s ceramic corpus and help clarify the site’s role within the larger interaction network of western Anatolia. A previous study employing neutron activation analysis (NAA) of ceramic sherds from the site identified 10 discrete compositional groups; however, the origins of some sherds remained unclear. The current study employed strontium isotopic analysis of sherds from one of the ambiguous types, Asia Minor Light-Colored, to determine whether the specimens represented local or nonlocal wares. Additional analyses incorporating strontium and lead isotopic analysis of the same selection of sherds in addition to local soils are presented as a method for relating the ceramic specimens to their geological source of origin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Geological and Technological Contributions to the Interpretation of Radiogenic Isotope Data   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39518.0