Provenance Study of Archaeological Ceramic

Abstract One hundred sixty three ceramic fragment samples from three archaeological sites were analyzed using instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) to determine the concentration of 24 chemical elements: As, Ba, Ce, Co, Cr, Cs, Eu, Fe, Hf, K, La, Lu, Na, Nd, Rb, Sb, Sc, Sm, Ta, Tb, Th, U, Yb, and Zn. Bivariate plots and a multivariate statistical method, discriminant analysis, were performed on the data set. Discriminant analysis identified three compositional grouping and derived two discriminant functions that account for 100% of the variance between groups. The results show, at a confidence level of 98%, that ceramics of each separate site are statistically similar among them and it can be said that a common source of raw material was used independently in each of these sites.