Impact of Waterlogging on Archeaological Ceramics

Pottery is a key material for understanding archaeological cultures, offering valuable insights into origins, production techniques, and recipes through its chemical and mineralogical composition. However, when archaeological pottery is exposed to waterlogged sediments, it often undergoes chemical and mineralogical alterations, complicating its classification and archaeometric analysis. The extent and consistency of these changes remain poorly understood due to a lack of systematic studies on the effects of waterlogging. A better understanding of these transformations is essential to enable reliable interpretations of pottery recovered from such environments.

To address this issue, we have adopted an interdisciplinary approach that combines expertise from archaeometry, mineralogy, and geochemistry. Initially, different types of pottery are mineralogically and geochemically characterized to establish baseline data before conducting leaching experiments in controlled laboratory environments. Key factors influencing alteration mechanisms such as the chemical composition of ceramics and water (e.g., saline vs. freshwater), pH, temperature, diffusive soil gases (e.g., CO₂), and exposure time—are systematically investigated.

Leaching experiments with powdered pottery are conducted to simulate long-term exposure to waterlogged sediments. Both the eluate and the residual solid are analyzed after the experiments to identify which elements are leached and whether new mineral phases have formed, potentially altering the ceramics