Radiocarbon Dating: Pottery & Ceramic

Different types of ceramic products became widely used in Eastern Europe since the end of VII–VI millennium BC. Manufacture of early pottery was closely associated with technologies using organic additives (grass, straw, river and lake silt and manure) for plasticity and strength.

Radiocarbon analysis can provide direct chronological information for pottery when an appropriate carbon fraction associated with manufacture or use can be reliably identified and isolated. Pottery may contain carbon from several sources, so sample selection, pretreatment and interpretation are essential when relating a measured radiocarbon age to the archaeological event of interest.

Archaeological ceramic sample

Carbon sources in pottery

Datable carbon in pottery could be of different origin: added into clay during production (for plasticity and strength), or penetrating into pottery matrix during food preparation or oil lighting. Both are transformed into fine coal inside the alumosilicate matrix.

The carbon content of coal inclusions after annealing ceramics is about 0.6–2% of total weight. This carbon is relatively well protected from oxidation inside the aluminum-silicate matrix.

As datable carbon concentration in pottery can be 0.5%–2.0%, it must be concentrated and transformed into counting media. Modern technology (Skripkin & Kovalyukh, 1998) allows processing pottery using direct pyrolysis. 1.0% of carbon in pottery body corresponds to about 1.0 g of benzene for LS counting.

The advantage of the modern benzene line is that it allows C-14 study of samples with trace amounts of datable carbon, including high ash content plants, bottom sediments and archaeological ceramics.

Ceramic sherds for dating