The provenance of Bronze Age pottery from Central and Eastern Greece

Samples from nearly 800 Bronze Age pottery sherds from Euboea, \nEastern Boeotia and Eastern Thessaly were analysed together with 9 raw \nclays from the same areas. The-analysis was carried out in an attempt \nto identify areas of pottery manufacture, to discover the origin of specific \ngroups of pottery, to relate pottery to, raw clays and to see how \nfar pottery compositions can be associated with, and predicted by, geology. \nThe work was done on the same lines as earlier studies at the \nOxford Laboratory and at the British School at Athens. The main analytical \ntechnique used was therefore optical emission spectroscopy. Some \n25% of the total number of sherds were also analysed by atomic absorption \nspectrophotometry so that the results obtained by the two techniques \ncould be compared. The interpretation of the results was facilitated \nby the use of, computer program packages for cluster and discriminant \nanalysis. \nBoth optical emission and atomic absorption analysis resulted in \nbroadly similar groupings although the absolute concentrations were not \ndirectly comparable. The groupings obtained after atomic absorption \nanalysis had the narrower concentration ranges. Nine elements were \nmeasured by both techniques but in atomic absorption potassium was added \nand proved; useful as an additional discriminant. \nSix composition groups were distinguished from the data. One of \nthem was identified as Euboean, 2 as Boeotian and 3 as coming from different \nregions of Thessaly. The greatest movement of pottery within \nthese areas was from Euboea to Thessaly. No composition group which \noriginated from outside these regions was identified. Six of the 9 \nraw clays were associated with the prevailing composition group in the \narea from which they came. It was not possible to predict trends in \npottery composition by examination of the local geology.