Experimental Procedures

A high proportion of the sherds analysed were provided by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Musée du Louvre in Paris. In the case of Egypt, Kaczmarczyk also collected sherds from relevant archaeological sites, and in particular, from Fustat near to present day Cairo. In addition, Donald Whitcomb provided a group of sherds from his excavations at Qusier al-Qadim on the Egyptian Red Sea coast. A high proportion of the sherds collected by Kaczmarczyk and those provided from Qusier al-Qadim are available in the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA) in Oxford together with photographs (Table 2).

The glaze analyses were made on the glaze surface, or sometimes the glaze edge, using XRF operated in air, and were therefore non-destructive. However, since the analyses were made in air, data were obtained only for elements with atomic number greater than potassium, and therefore, no data are available for the light elements (i.e., sodium, magnesium, aluminium and silicon).

For the body analyses, which are not available for all the sherds, small samples were drilled from the sides of the sherds, and these were analysed either using AAS in the RLAHA in Oxford, or using PIXE in the Laboratoire de recherché des musées de France based at the Musée du Louvre.