STUDIO ARCHEOMETRICO DI MATERIALI CERAMICI POST-MEDIEVALI

The title of this PhD thesis, “Archaeometric study of post-medieval ceramic materials”, focuses the attention on the metodology of the research: archaeometric investigations, that are able to represent an efficient and important aid to the historical and archaeological information, other then being a scientific support for the study. Two different classes of ceramic are the objects of this research: sgraffito ceramics on one hand and majolicas on the other. Both of them have been studied as different witnesses of the same productive and cultural context, regarding the italian territory during the postmedieval period. A big part of this work consists in presenting the results of the archaeometric analyses carried out in the laboratories of CNR–ISTEC (Institute of Science and Technology for Ceramic Materials), in Faenza (RA). Detailed analyses have been performed on fragments of sgraffito ceramic coming from archaeological excavations or from objects kept in museums of Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Friuli Venezia Giulia. The main results consisted in having developped a new classification for this peculiar ceramic production, based on the microstructural and chemical aspects of the artefacts. The slip layer shows to be a good discriminator of the provenance of the studied ceramics, more than the paste and the transparent glaze layer. Fragments of majolica, stylistically attributed to the “Bianchi” decorative family, have been analysed in order to verify the tecnhnical caracteristics that contributed to the aesthetic revolution. For the purpose, artefacts surely produced in Faenza have been selected for the analyses. After that, the results have been compared with the data obtained from the investigations carried out on fragments of the same style, coming from archaeological excavations of the Netherlands, which are presumably italian. From the analyses, only a few “dutch” samples seem to be from Faenza. Other provenances shoul be investigated, such as Liguria, that was involved in commercial exchage with Holland during the first modern age.