Thermal, chemical, and mineralogical characterization of ceramic tobacco pipes from Cyprus

This study is focused on simultaneous thermoanalytical investigations by TG/DTG-DTA technique applied for characterization of samples collected from archaeological site of Nicosia, Cyprus, dating to seventeenth century and gave new information on the firing technology. The ceramic samples derived from Ottomanic tobacco pipes were characterized by the related techniques such as X-ray powder diffraction for the mineralogical composition, and inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry and micro-X-ray fluorescence spectroscopic analysis for the chemical content. It was found that they consisted mainly of quartz, calcite, feldspars, and micas. For the majority of the investigated ceramic samples, the thermal behavior investigation collaborates with their mineralogical findings, and resulted to the firing temperature at ~700 °C, due to the existence of calcite. Only in two samples with very high content in quartz, absence of calcite, low amounts of adsorbed water and of total mass loss, and absence of micas, the firing process resulted up to 1000 °C.