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Petrographic and chemical analyses of the “ceramic body” of 114 majolica artefacts manufactured in Sicily over a wide time range (16th–-19th century) are presented. All the analysed samples, which belong to museums and private collections, were previously attributed to Sicilian workshops based on stylistic features evaluated by expert historians of art. Unambiguous identification of the production sites of majolica handicrafts in Sicily remains, however, open to question when this relies only on purely stylistic considerations. To this end compositional and/or textural markers have been searched for in the “ceramic body” of the majolica artefacts in order to differentiate between the centres of manufacture which were active in Sicily in previous centuries. The study of thin sections has allowed the characterization of the raw materials as well as the microscopic “fabric” of manufacture from four of the more relevant Sicilian production sites, namely: Caltagirone, Sciacca, Palermo and Santo Stefano di Camastra. Chemical data, including minor and trace elements, have been submitted to computer assisted multivariate statistical techniques. Principal component analysis (PCA) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA) have defined compositional “ceramic reference groups” and, consequently, have enabled a more realistic discrimination of provenance. These data have documented several imports of majolica from Naples, while the same artefacts were previously attributed to Sicilian workshops, based on stylistic considerations . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Samples of Roman thin-walled ware from Segesta (northwestern Sicily), dating back to the early Imperial period, were studied by optical microscopy (OM) and Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA). Up to now, this class of Roman fine tableware has only occasionally been evaluated archaeometrically. Nevertheless, numerous production centres are believed to have been simultaneously active in the western Mediterranean area. Petrographic and chemical data seem to be in agreement with the archaeological hypothesis of local manufacture in Segesta for most of the analysed samples, through a comparison with kiln wasters and local raw materials. The effectiveness of thin-section petrography for determining the provenance of such a tiny tempered class of pottery and the integrated use of two different grouping procedures (petrography and chemistry) were also tested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]