Cucuteni Culture: A Systematic Physical Study of Pottery Shards

Abstract

The magnetic properties of pottery shards combined with XRD analysis and SEM analysis can offer useful data for their characterization. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the technological parameters applied for the pottery production (temperature, atmosphere, and duration of firing). In order to do this, we analyze pottery samples from the Cucuteni-Cetățuie archaeological site and clay samples collected from an area nearby the mentioned archaeological site. Different methods like XRD, SEM and vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM) have been employed to estimate the firing temperature and firing atmosphere.