Abstract
Spacers are clay made supports used for piling the pots into the cooking chamber of kilns, in order to obtain a homogeneous set of fired pieces, preventing them from stacking on to another. The set of spacers analysed for the research I'm presenting comes from the site of Mantova (MN), Italy and can be dated between the end of the 4th c. BCE and the beginning of the 3rd, when a turmoil happened in Northen Italy, due to the Romanization of the Po Plain. A thorough knowledge of these objects has been achieved through a preliminary petrographic investigation which was supplemented by a detailed analysis of the mineralogical characterization of the spacers, by the application of X-ray diffraction (XRD), combined with the set of data obtained from the pXRF. All the analyses have been carried out at the laboratory of archaeometry (ARISTEAS) at Kalamata, University of Peloponnese.
Although small and often neglected, this class of material -if correctly analysed-can lead us to a deeper knowledge of technological choices within the field of pottery firing. They can reveal information regarding the firing temperatures and the firing conditions, and the level of degradation of the compositional elements due to excessive exposure to fire.