Evaluation of complementary methodologies applied to a preliminary archaeometric study of glazed pottery from Agsu (Azerbaijan)

Agsu town is an Azerbaijan's recently excavated, important archaeological site, considered acrossroads of commercial routes since the ancient times between China, Asia Minor andEurope. For this reason, the area is rich in different typologies of artifacts with variousprovenances such as stone objects, glazed pottery and coins. The excavations indicated thepresence of workshops specialized in various spheres of metallurgy, as well as of dye-works.A non-invasive or, at least, micro-destructive multi-technique approach was applied for thecharacterization of eight archaeological pottery fragments taken from Agsu Site (Azerbaijan)dated back XIX century A.D.. At different spatial scales, a combination of complementaryoptical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy – energy dispersive spectroscopy(SEM-EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) wasapplied. The proposed study is aimed at addressing issues such as the characterization ofraw materials, the determination of manufacturing, the reconstruction of the firingtechnology, the identification of the pigments used for decoration and the formulation of afirst hypothesis about provenance of the artifacts considered the scarce studies about it in literature.