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Abstract:
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It has become imperative to apply objective scientific methods to confirm subjective conclusions of archaeologists about ancient pottery. The Mossbauer Effect technique, which is characterized by its high resolving power, has been applied in the present work in order to find the origin of the pottery either through the knowledge of the type and locality of the clay from which that pottery was manufactured, or through comparison with other pottery of known structure. This identification would lead to the possibility of tracing the civilization transfer among neighbouring states in certain regions. An example of some work which we are carrying out now is the study of pottery sherds found in Qatar. Their origin is not yet known and we are aiming to throw some light on it.
The present paper reviews the results obtained by the application of the Mossbauer Effect technique for studying ancient pottery sherds covering historical periods of the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Islamic peoples. It was possible to characterize the pottery from each period. The ageing effect has been observed in pottery sherds older than a thousand years, and it is proposed that it is caused by the environmental nuclear radiations. Now we are trying to utilize this ageing phenomenon to determine the age of unknown ancient pottery. |