Mineralogical and Petrographic Techniques in Archaelogy

It has been widely recognized that analyzing the properties of the archaeological samples provides revealing information about the artefacts (Banning 2002). At the present day, a large variety of analytical techniques exist, providing information on the components, origin and structure of many archaeological samples (e.g. ceramics, mortars, slags, marbles etc.). While these methods may generate useful information on one or more aspects of the studied samples when applied stand-alone techniques, recent studies on archaeological survey strategies have underlined the importance of a multi – analytical approach in order to understand the complex history of archaeological samples (Annamalai et al. 2013; Miriello