Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences, cilt.34, sa.SI-1, ss.275-298, 2025 (SCI-Expanded)
Cultural heritage can be effectively protected and restored by accurately identifying archaeometric materials used in historical sites, such as rocks, ceramics, bricks, mortar, and plaster, and determining their origins. This interdisciplinary study employs mineralogical, petrographic, and isotopic properties together with geochemical analyses to ascertain the origins of these materials. This study focuses on the provenance characterization of ceramics as possible source rocks of ceramic raw material using new geochemical discrimination diagrams. Detailed geochemical analyses of manufactured ceramics from various rock types from different locations were conducted and new geochemical discrimination diagrams were created to determine the origins of the ceramics. The geochemical data of ceramics that originated from different rock types, including igneous, pyroclastic, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, and were collected from various historical sites in Türkiye were used in the newly created discrimination diagrams. Consequently, it was determined that it was not possible to distinguish their origins based on rock composition using the geochemistry of the ceramics, but it was more feasible to distinguish origins based on rock groups. Mineralogical and petrographic observations must be used together with geochemical data in efforts to characterize the possible source rocks of ceramics. The newly generated diagrams were also compared with the geochemical properties of clay samples from Türkiye and Georgia to accurately classify their origins. The clay samples sourced from Georgia originated from acidic igneous rocks, while the clay minerals utilized in Turkish ceramics came from a range of sources, including both acidic and basic igneous rocks.