More than one way to perform archaeometric analyses on pottery. Case studies from prehistoric to Bronze Age Sudan

Sudanese archaeology boasts a long-standing tradition of studying pottery technology, including through archaeometric analyses. In the early 1970s, several international and Sudanese scholars conducted the first petrographic and geochemical studies on Sudanese Mesolithic and Neolithic ceramic assemblages. More or less contemporaneously, the first attempt to classify ancient Egyptian ceramic fabrics was organised into the ‘Vienna system’ which became the backbone for the classification of clays and fabrics based on certain physical and technological properties. Building on such past studies, current archaeometric approaches to Sudanese pottery commonly integrate a wide range of organic (e.g., ORA) and inorganic (e.g., OM, XRF, iNAA) analyses to reconstruct the chaîne op´eratoire of the ceramic assemblages, local traditions, and ceramic ecologies, considering both the natural and anthropological spheres. The following paper compares different archaeometric studies from key contexts of Sudanese archaeology. The selected case studies range chronologically from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. In particular, we demonstrate that shared standard research methods allow for the successful comparison of ceramic assemblages from different chronological and geographic contexts, despite varying sampling strategies, analytical techniques, archaeological challenges, and research objectives. All of which can be calibrated based on the specific ceramic assemblage, site chronology, as well as the topographical and cultural landscape.