Standardisation of elemental analytical techniques applied to provenance studies of archaeological ceramics: an inter laboratory calibration studyElectronic supplementary information (ESI) available: five tabular appendices giving element concentrations measured in reference materials. See http://www.rsc.org/suppdata/an/b1/b109603f/

TLDR

Chemical analysis is widely used to provenance archaeological ceramics, but inter‑laboratory comparability of the various techniques must be established to enable data exchange. This study compares the analytical schemes employed by four routine pottery laboratories to assess their consistency. The authors evaluated NAA, XRF, ICP‑OES, and ICP‑MS on geological reference materials, statistically analyzed the results, and sought calibration factors to reduce systematic differences.

Abstract

Chemical analysis is a well-established procedure for the provenancing of archaeological ceramics. Various analytical techniques are routinely used and large amounts of data have been accumulated so far in data banks. However, in order to exchange results obtained by different laboratories, the respective analytical procedures need to be tested in terms of their inter-comparability. In this study, the schemes of analysis used in four laboratories that are involved in archaeological pottery studies on a routine basis were compared. The techniques investigated were neutron activation analysis (NAA), X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). For this comparison series of measurements on different geological standard reference materials (SRM) were carried out and the results were statistically evaluated. An attempt was also made towards the establishment of calibration factors between pairs of analytical setups in order to smooth the systematic differences among the results.