| Abstract [eng] |
Pottery, which served ancient humans in many areas of life, contains microstructural and compositional clues about ceramic production technology and provenance. However, until now, these aspects of pottery have been studied rarely and with very small sample sizes. In order to evaluate the potential of chemical and physical ceramic analysis in Lithuania, 543 ceramic samples from 45 archaeological sites dated to the Iron Age were analysed using a portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analyser, and 521 of these sherds were also examined using ceramic petrography. The data revealed that ceramic body production technology changed little during the Iron Age. Only burnished pottery and the outer layers of rusticated wares exhibited distinctive technological traits. Petrographic results also suggest that pottery was produced at the household level rather than by professional potters. The provenance study revealed that pottery from neighbouring sites often differs in chemical composition or petrographic features. In turn, this allows the detection of exchange between such sites. However, no broader trends in Iron Age Lithuanian pottery were identified that would enable the differentiation of ceramics by region. Therefore, long-distance exchange cannot be reconstructed. In this study, exchanges between hillforts were rarely detected, suggesting that hillfort communities mostly produced their own ceramics and the goods transported in them. |
