LIBS, EDXRF analysis and Paleointensity measurements on ancient pottery samples recently excavated in Tamilnadu, India

Ancient ceramics are the most abundant artifacts that have been studied to improve our knowledge of past societies. Archaeological research based on the examination of ware shape, style, color, decoration and overall fabric; provide a wealth of information concerning typological and functional issues, chronology and provenance. In recent years, the characterization of ancient pottery to determine its provenance has involved the development, exploration, and testing of a large number of analytical techniques in order to compile and extract relevant compositional information. Spectroscopic and archaeomagnetic dating technique is the important scientific tool to find out the elemental analysis as well as to predict the age of the artifacts. The rich quantity of clay minerals especially iron oxides were found in bricks which help for predicting the ancient geomagnetic field intensity. In the present work, Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS), Energy Dispersive X-Ray Fluorescence (EDXRF) and archaeomagnetic dating studies have been performed on archaeological pottery samples collected from Sankari Durg archaeological site to estimate the ancient geomagnetic field intensity measurement. The mean paleointensity value of the sample is found to be 45.2 ± 0.9 μT and the estimated archaeomagnetic dating of Sankari Durg pottery samples are 18th Century; it has good agreement with the age predicted by the archaeologist. (author)