Archaeometric study of five celtiberian pottery production centres from Central Iberian's Chain

The aim of this work is the archaeometric characterization of pottery production related with five local Celtiberian production centres from the Central Iberian's Chain. In these potter's workshops dated from the third to the second centuries BC, have been made wheel's pottery grouped in three main types of vessels: Storage/transport, service and table. The main goal of this research is to characterize different ceramic pastes from a mineralogical, textural and chemical point of view, with the purpose to form reference groups from each production centre and to establish the technology of manufacture. The samples have been analysed using optical microscopy (OM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), textural analysis by means of an image digitalization system and chemical analyses by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES). The results derived have allowed the recognition of eight different ceramic fabrics. All production centres used a mud clay raw material of illite-muscovite composition with very fine natural crushed inclusions of variable lithology. With the exception of one Centre, the differences showed between pastes from the same atelier may be due to different manipulation of the same raw material. The minerals phases detected and microscopic observations have permitted to estimate fire conditions for the analyzed pastes.