Insights into the provenance of R oman moulds and poinçons found at S coppieto ( T erni, I taly)

Laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry ( LA–ICP–MS ) was used to determine the composition of four poinçons and six moulds from the large R oman archaeological site of S coppieto ( T erni, I taly), an important production centre for several types of ceramic wares from the fourth century bc to the fifth century ad . Compositional data were transformed to move from the simplex to the real space, and classical multivariate tools applied to highlight the similarities between the new material found at S coppieto and existing reference groups. Statistical analysis identified distinctive chemical characteristics in the samples from A rezzo and V asanello (central I taly), which are clearly different from moulds from S coppieto. The results indicate that poinçons found at S coppieto were probably made in A rezzo and raw materials from S coppieto were used for local production of moulds. Therefore, S coppieto should be considered one of the most important production centres of R oman pottery, since all stages of the production cycle were carried out by highly specialized workers.