Geochemical characterisation of north Asian glazed stonewares: a comparative analysis of NAA, ICP-OES and non-destructive pXRF

The analytical performance of non-destructive portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) is compared with that of Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) for the elemental characterisation of a group of glazed stonewares from North-East Asia. As a non-destructive technique pXRF is potentially well suited to the elemental analysis of high value archaeological and museum collections but has yet to be critically evaluated for the analysis of archaeological stonewares. In this study we use multivariate evaluation to compare results from non-destructive pXRF in relation to ICP-OES and NAA analysis for the same group of samples. We conclude that, although pXRF is comparatively limited to a small number of major, minor and trace elements, these are sufficient to identify the same compositional groups as high dimensional ICP-OES and NAA datasets for this assemblage.

► We analyse a sample of North-East Asian stoneware sherds by non-destructive pXRF.
► Multivariate comparison with ICP-OES and NAA analysis showed good correspondence with pXRF results.
► Study demonstrates non-destructive pXRF viable alternative characterisation method for stonewares.