Provenance Determination of Pottery from Hala Sultan Tekke Using Lead Isotopic Analysis: Preliminary Results

Recently, an interdisciplinary geoarchaeological project has been launched to investigate the interaction between men and the palaeoenvironments in the Larnaca region (Cyprus) during the Late Bronze Age. A part of this project concerns the identification of the provenance of the raw material utilized in production of pottery and potential source changes during this period. It tests the use of lead isotopic signatures (206Pb/204Pb vs 207Pb/204Pb) as a tracer of the pottery source. Therefore, eighteen sherds of the most common pottery types, excavated at the Late Bronze Age site near the Hala Sultan Tekke mosque, were selected and compared with a first set of thirteen outcrops, located in the vicinity of the archaeological site. The chosen outcrops were sampled during a preliminary geological survey based on the lithologies: holocene deposits (sand, silt, clay), pleistocene terrace deposits (calcarenites, sands) and palaeogene marls, which possibly could have been used as primary raw material for the pottery. Both sets of samples were analyzed for lead isotopes using the MC-ICP-MS (ULB, DSTE). In parallel, the mineralogy of the sherds and of the different outcrops was defined using X-ray diffraction (ULg, URAP). Thin sections were also realized on the eighteen sherds and examined under the microscope to better characterize their composition. First results show that most of the lead isotopic composition of sherds correlates with some outcrop samples.