Ceramic Thin-Section Petrography
Ceramic thin-section petrography characterizes pottery by examining a wafer-thin slice of a sherd under a polarizing microscope, the same instrument geologists use to study rocks. Because most pottery is made from clay tempered with sand, crushed rock, grog, or shell, the mineral and rock inclusions visible in thin section carry a geological fingerprint of the raw materials, while the clay matrix and voids record how the pot was formed and fired. As Patrick Quinn's reference work sets out, the analyst identifies and quantifies these constituents, sorts sherds into petrographic fabric groups, and then relates each group's mineralogy to regional geology to infer where the pottery was made and how it was manufactured. It bridges the visual world of ceramic typology and the elemental world of chemical provenance.
Source record
Citations copied verbatim from the method’s source record. No claim-level verification is inferred from them.
- Quinn, P. S. (2013). Ceramic Petrography: The Interpretation of Archaeological Pottery & Related Artefacts in Thin Section. Archaeopress. · ISBN 9781905739592
- Rice, P. M. (1987). Pottery Analysis: A Sourcebook. University of Chicago Press. · ISBN 9780226711188
Curated claims
Claims persisted in the evidence ledger, each with its own assessment.
This view does not invent a claim assessment when the ledger has none.
Related methods
Generated from the method graph and shown as machine-suggested relations — no evidence claim is inferred.