Provenance studies of pottery fragments from medieval Cairo, Egypt

In the analysis of archeological pottery fragments, instrumental neutron activation analysis has been utilized to establish the elemental concentrations of up to 37 chemical elements for each of 53 archeological pottery samples from medieval Cairo, Egypt, and one additional sample of Chinese porcelain. These elemental concentrations have been utilized in a statistical analysis procedure in order to determine similarities and correlations between the various samples. Multivariate analyses have been used to quantitatively determine these interrelationships. This methodology successfully separated the Egyptian samples into two broad categories: (1) polychrome decorated ceramic ware and (2) monochrome celadon wale. In addition the methodology successfully identified the one unique sample of Chinese porcelain. Several samples appeared to be either a mixture of categories or outliers in the data set and were not attributable to any distinct category.