Abstract

RADA, Myriam; COSTANZO-ALVAREZ, Vincenzo; ALDANA, Milagrosa  and  CAMPOS, Corina. Rock magnetic and petrographic characterization of prehistoric amerindian ceramics from the dos mosquises island (los Roques, Venezuela). INCI [online]. 2008, vol.33, n.2, pp.129-134. ISSN 0378-1844.

Preliminary rock magnetic studies of 12 prehistoric Amerin-dian pottery shards (Dos Mosquises Island, Los Roques, Venezu-ela) have been carried out in order to characterize different clay sourcings and pottery manufaacturing techniques. Although these ceramics have been excavated in a single archeological site, sty-listic features sort them out into three distinct groups: standard-ized, heterogeneous and unknown). Petrographic analyses appear to be suiTable to distinguishing clay sources. Scatter plots of initial magnetic susceptibility (MS) versus saturation isothermal remanent magnetization (SIRM) and natural remanent magneti-zation (NRM) reveal two data trends that categorize the three sets of samples into two main groups, namely heterogeneous and standarized/unknown. The SIRM versus NRM crossplot also re-lates the three styles of ceramics with pottery shards from other islands and prehistoric Amerindian cultures. Thermomagnetic curves provide valuable information about original firing condi-tions in variable redox atmospheres

Keywords : Arqueology; Pottery; Provenance Studies; Rock Magnetism.