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9
XII/1/2021
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Petrography and Micromorphology Face-to-Face: the Potential
of Multivocality in the Study of Earth-Based Archaeological Materials
Susanna Cereda
1*
, Pamela Fragnoli
2
1
University of Innsbruck, Institute of Archaeologies, Langer Weg 9-11, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
2
Austrian Archeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Franz Klein-Gasse 1, A-1190 Wien, Austria
1. Introduction
The implementation of techniques frst developed in the feld of
geology or soil science to answer questions of archaeological
relevance is not a novelty. After all, soils and sediments (from
the fne clayey fraction to rocks) are a main component of
any archaeological site. This omnipresent element can be
found in a myriad of forms, and one of the most common –
at least from the onset of this technology – is pottery. Using
the same concepts and methods established for the study
of rocks, ceramic petrography cuts thin sections through
the body of vessels in order to study the nature and spatial
arrangement of both their coarse and fne components (Quinn,
2013). Even more abundant than pottery is the sedimentary
fabric that composes the body of a site, and that derives
primarily from constructed, collapsed or levelled buildings.
The microscopic analysis of these sedimentary sequences is
called micromorphology, and since the 1980s it has gained
increasing attention in archaeology (Courty and Fedorof,
1982; Goldberg, 1979; Goldberg, 1980; Stoops, 1984).
Although converging on the type of studied material
and also on the wide adoption of optical microscopy for
the observation of their samples, micromorphology and
ceramic petrography are treated as two separate felds, since
they aim at clarifying diferent aspects of past societies.
Ceramic petrography deals with synthetic artefacts produced
by humans through a specifc sequence of operation (the
so-called
chaîne opératoire
) in order to shed light on ancient
technological behaviour and exchanges. Micromorphology
looks at the microstratigraphy of a site in order to assess what
events/agencies led to the deposition of a sequence and what
post-depositional processes afected the stratigraphy. While
the diference inherent in the research questions is clear, the
distinction based on the type of materials analysed might be
ambiguous and artifcial. This concern, for example, earth
construction materials, such as mudbricks, adobe, plaster,
daub, concrete and mortars that ft both defnitions, being as
Volume XII ● Issue 1/2021 ● Pages 9–18
*Corresponding author. E-mail: Susanna.Cereda@uibk.ac.at
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received: 14
th
September 2020
Accepted: 3
rd
March 2021
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2021.1.1
Key words:
earthen materials
polarising microscopy
micromorphology
ceramic petrography
tell sites
Arslantepe
ABSTRACT
Soils and sediments are among the most commonly found materials in archaeological contexts,
occurring in a myriad of forms. We need only think of pottery, which is a manipulated and fred
sediment, or the diferent earthen deposits that compose the bulk of many sites. Traditionally, the
study of the microscopic and compositional characteristics of pottery has been the focus of ceramic
archaeometry, while the microstratigraphic analysis of archaeological sediments was always the main
task of geoarchaeology. In this paper, the authors explore the potential of a closer collaboration between
researchers dealing with the same type of raw material and often using the same methods (optical
microscopy), who rarely confront the approaches and expertise of the other feld. For this purpose,
two samples belonging to the pre-historic and early historic site of Arslantepe were selected for
a methodological exercise: a fragment of an andiron and a piece of a double-vaulted oven. Ultimately,
the results of this work demonstrate that researchers from both felds can proft from a more intense
exchange: one that takes advantage of the expertise developed in answering distinct but complementary
research questions, and calls for the blurring of strict inter-disciplinary boundaries.
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IANSA 2021 ● XII/1 ● 9–18
Susanna Cereda, Pamela Fragnoli: Petrography and Micromorphology Face-to-Face: the Potential of Multivocality
in the Study of Earth-Based Archaeological Materials
10
they are the result of human recipes, but at the same time
parts of living spaces that often require a microstratigraphic
analysis as well. As a result, earth construction materials
are invariably handled in the handbooks of both ceramic
petrography and micromorphology (Karkanas and Goldberg,
2018; Macphail and Goldberg, 2017; Nicosia and Stoops,
2017; Quinn, 2013), even though scientifc papers on single
case-studies show a prevalence of micromorphologists.
In contrast, some other clay-based artefacts, such as
loom weights, spools and andirons, are mostly studied by
ceramic petrographists, but would strongly beneft from a
micromorphological perspective as they are items closely
interconnected with the domestic sphere.
2. Are four eyes better than two?
Although there is a wide range of archaeological fndings that
interest both ceramic petrographists and micromorphologists,
attempts at data integration rarely occur and are typically
limited to discussions about the adoption of common
standardised descriptive terminologies (Josephs, 2005;
Whitbread, 1995). The ambivalent distance/proximity
between these felds was particularly striking for the authors
of this paper because of their mutual involvement in the study
of earthen materials at Arslantepe (Figure 1), a 30 m high
tell located in the south-east of Turkey, next to the modern
city of Malatya. The site, occupied from approximately the
5
th
millennium BCE to the Byzantine period (4
th
–6
th
century
CE), has been the object of systematic excavations carried
out annually for more than 50 years by a team led by “La
Sapienza” University of Rome (Frangipane, 2011). The long
and complex occupation sequence of the site allowed the
recovery of large amounts of material culture that is studied
by several classes of specialists, including – as mentioned
before – the two authors of this contribution.
At Arslantepe, Pamela Fragnoli analysed, using thin-
section petrography and bulk geochemistry, vessels and