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THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ‘BEST RELATIVE FIT FACTOR’ WHEN EVALUATING ELEMENTAL CONCENTRATION DATA OF POTTERY DEMONSTRATED WITH MYCENAEAN SHERDS FROM SINDA, CYPRUS
Author(s) -
MOMMSEN H.,
SJÖBERG B. L.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
archaeometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.716
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1475-4754
pISSN - 0003-813X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4754.2007.00306.x
Subject(s) - pottery , archaeological science , archaeology , neutron activation analysis , neutron activation , mineralogy , geology , geography , chemistry , neutron , physics , radiochemistry , quantum mechanics
Neutron activation analysis of pottery was established at Bonn in 1983 and has since become one of the primary archaeometry‐based analytical techniques at the facility. A brief history of the laboratory and a discussion of the best relative fit procedure for pottery is provided. When comparing concentration data for pottery, a best relative fit should always be considered. This mathematical procedure generally results in ‘sharper’ concentration patterns and improves the separability of chemically not very different compositional groups. This is demonstrated for a set of 30 Late Cypriot (Myc. IIIC1) pottery samples from Sinda, Cyprus, which allow formation of a good reference pattern for this site. Applying factors in the range of 0.82–1.43, a number of samples from Egypt and Palestine can be assigned with high probability to a Cypriot origin.