Archaeometric characterisation of ancient pottery belonging to the archaeological site of Novalesa Abbey (Piedmont, Italy) by ICP-MS and spectroscopic techniques coupled to multivariate statistical tools

This work presents the archaeometric characterisation of a group of ancient pottery remains discovered during the restoring of the Novalesa Abbey (Susa Valley, Turin, Italy) performed in 2000. The characterisation focuses on the achievement of information about provenance and production process of the samples. Firstly, the data concerning the multi-element characterisation of the samples by inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) were analysed by chemometric tools (principal component analysis and cluster analysis) in order to obtain information about their similarity and clustering. These information, integrated with the results of micro-Raman spectroscopy analysis of the inclusions shed light on differences in the production process of the samples.