For a few months now, Jacques Burlot has been studying production techniques of Western Anatolian ceramics with SEM analyses. The studied samples are specific of ceramic types such as polychrome sgraffito wares (“Fette Ware” type), “Miletus” ware, the turquoise glazed and molded wares.

This study focuses more precisely on the ceramics’ decorative layers which are the glaze and the slip; the SEM analyses enable us to determine their elemental compositions and microstructures.

This work, associated with provenance studies and chronological ones, aims at understanding the way new techniques in pottery manufacture were introduced in Western Anatolia between the Late Byzantine and the Early Ottoman periods.

View under the SEM (backscattered electrons) of the microstuctrure of a ceramics, showing the layers of body, slip and glaze
Photo J. Burlot

Yona Waksman and Jacques Burlot will spend three weeks in Western Turkey working in four archaeological sites (Ephesos [OAI], Pergamon and Miletus [DAI], Sardis [Harvard University]). They expect to study, contextualize, record and sample several medieval ceramic productions and types, in collaboration with the excavations teams and especially with Joanita Vroom (Ephesos), Beate Arslan-Böhlendorf (Miletus) and Sarah Japp (Pergamon).

This sampling campaign continues previous provenance studies of medieval Western Anatolian pottery productions, and aims at completing an already rich corpus of analytical data. New aspects will be dealt with by Jacques Burlot in the framework of his PhD thesis. They concern the transmission and diffusion of ceramics production techniques, through the observation and analyses of the associations glaze/slip/body.