Cumaean pottery: firing conditions and raw materials in 8th-6th century BCE.

Cumae was founded by Greeks in the 8th century BCE and is regarded the first colony established on the European continent. The colony was famous for the quality of the ceramic production and specifically cooking pottery. This project aims to learn more about the production methods and firing conditions used in the ancient colony of Cumae. We would like to call the attention on two types of samples in particular: cooking pottery shards and painted ceramics. These two types of samples caught our interest following the X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments performed on ID22. The high quality of the observed diffraction profiles allowed us to characterize the mineral composition and find peculiar phases. Further analysis on these types of samples would help to generalize these findings and clarify the pottery production methods and the raw materials used to create Cumaean pottery.