Application of chemical and chemometric analytical techniques to the study of ancient ceramics from Dougga (Tunisia)

In the present paper chemical characterization has been carried out on 67 shards of archaeological pottery from Dougga (North Tunisia). The analysed shards, dated to the Byzantine period (VI–VII century A.D.), belong to the three ceramic classes African Red Slip Ware, Dougga Ware and African cooking Ware. Fourteen elements have been determined by both atomic emission spectroscopy with flame as source (AES) and by using an inductively coupled plasma source (ICP-OES). The data acquired have been treated by statistical techniques in order to define grouping for the examined shards. Both unsupervised and supervised methods have been employed in order to define groups of different pottery shards. As a comparison, some samples (control group) coming from Southern Tunisia have been examined. All the statistical methods employed have evidenced how the control group, as concerns the chemical composition, is clearly distinguishable from Ain Wassel samples which are highly homogeneous. In fact because of the compositional homogeneity of the Northern Tunisia productions, it is quite difficult to establish a good classification and distribution of the samples in well defined cluster. Nevertheless supervised analysis has evidenced how, among the three classes, the African cooking Ware is the more distinguishable one confirming the archaeologists' hypothesis that Dougga Ware is an imitation of African Red Slip Ware.