The Faience Industry at Kerma

2014

French tin-glazed earthenware, or faience, is commonly found during excavations in mainland North America, where it is usually identified using morpho-stylistic typologies based on regional styles. Since the 1970s, development of the archaeology of French production sites and of a well-crafted archaeometric methodology has led to a better understanding of the specific technical characteristics of this type of earthenware. Using control samples from faience factory dumps, many traditional attributions have been revised and some historical interpretations have been reviewed. Such advances are particularly important for material culture studies in former French colonial areas.

Documents de la Mission Archéologique Suisse au Soudan, 2009

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2015

In 1996, archaeological excavations close to the ancient Fulda faïence manufacture site unearthed a rich deposit of faïence wastes (biscuits, faïences, technical ceramics). The manufacture was founded in 1741 by Prince Abbot Amand von Buseck and closed down in 1761. This first archaeometric study of a German faïence manufacture included 31 samples produced between 1742 and 1760. Analytical techniques were optical microscopy, X-ray fluorescence, X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, coupled to an energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer. Biscuits and faïences are MgO-(5-13 wt.%) and CaO-rich (9-20 wt.%), easily distinguishable from the two French Mg-rich productions of Granges-le-Bourg and Lunéville that we know today. Three samples show high P 2 O 5 (2.6-3.3 wt.%). Such unusual concentrations are not due to the admixing of crushed bones to the clay during processing, or to one of the well-known post-firing secondary contamination processes, but are caused by the presence of sharp edged, rhomboedric grains with sizes around 20-30 μm and an overall chemical composition of apatite. These fragments are interpreted to be remnants of primary phosphoritic elements, present ab initium in the clay, and give some hints as to the origin of the raw materials used. Phosphoritic layers can be found in the German Trias, mostly in dolomitic marls of the Middle Keuper. Such marls form the basement on which Fulda is built and could easily have been extracted by the Fulda manufacture. The high MgO values of the faïences can therefore be linked to the presence of dolomitic grains in the plastic raw material, corroborated by the positive MgO/CaO correlation. Firing temperatures of the faïences were, according to their XRD patterns, mostly between 950 and 1050°C.

… de la région de …, 2004

Located in the Omo-Turkana basin at the northern limit of the Koobi Fora sedimentary Formation, the Fejej region has recently proven to be a rich study area for understanding early hominin behaviour and paleoenvironmental conditions. Among the rich fossiliferous and stone artefact localities discovered so far at Fejej, the FJ-1a archeological site has yielded a faunal and lithic assemblage in primary context. The archeological level is situated within a 15 meter fluvial sequence beneath a volcanic tuff. Geochronological data from the FJ-1 sequence indicate an age of nearly 1,9 Ma for the FJ-1a artefact level. The stone industry was knapped from locally available raw materials (mainly quartz and basalt) and rocks had been carefully selected according to specific petrographical and formal criterion. Hominins mastered several distinct stone knapping methods and used more or less exhaustive reduction sequences in order to produce small flakes. The different techniques used for stone reduction are defined in this paper thanks to a series of refits of flakes onto cores. Along with the refits, an in-depth analysis of the flakes, cores and worked pebbles provides an overview of the technological capacities of hominins present at the site nearly 2 million years ago. After the Fejej FJ-1a site was abandoned the archeological materials were rapidly buried, leaving an almost undisturbed archeological level. This site appears to represent a short episode of hominin occupation.

Journal of archaeological science, 2007

The chemical compositions and microstructures of some 35 faience objects from Egypt spanning the period from the Middle Kingdom through to the 22nd dynasty are determined using analytical scanning electron microscopy. Replicate faience beads glazed in the laboratory using the efflorescence and cementation methods are similarly investigated. In efflorescence glazing, there appears to be preferential efflorescence of soda over potash, and in cementation glazing, preferential take up of potash over soda into the glaze. These data are then used to try to infer the raw materials and methods of glazing employed in the production of the ancient faience. The glaze/glass phases present in the faience differ significantly in composition from that of New Kingdom glass. This could be due either to the use of different plant ashes or to changes in the composition of the plant ashes during the production of faience and/or glass. Although it is only rarely possible to determine with certainty whether ancient faience was glazed by efflorescence, cementation or application, the observed microstructures provide an indication of the approach adopted to achieve desired performance characteristics such as strength.

Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. Vol. 1319, 2011

Faience production methods include efflorescence, direct glaze application, and cementation glazing. However, similar processing has been used with a variety of other materials, such as glazed monolithic quartz, ground and re-fired faience, and steatite bodies. Furthermore, faience technology has been linked by similar processing to glass, synthetic pigment and glazing technologies. Here we reinforce these cross-craft relationships by comparing the range of similar functioning chemical elements in faience and glazed artifacts from a variety of archaeological sites that range from the Indus Valley to the Mediterranean. This broad comparative method based primarily on x-ray fluorescence analysis reveals trends in faience production, relationships with metallurgical technologies, and aspects of processing that provide areas of study that may be considered more closely in the future.

In: Herrero, J.M. and Vendrell, M. (eds): Seminarios de la Sociedad Espanola de Mineralogia, 2012

Kavos and the Special Deposits, 2015

Technè, 2016

Factory", excavated by W.M.F. Petrie in 1885, were exported throughout the Mediterranean world 1. It is likely that other faience products were also made in Naukratis and distributed widely, for example fi gurines of musicians which can be dated from separate evidence down to 550 BC 2 and New Year's fl asks 3. In addition to some typical Egyptian motifs, many