Physico-Chemical and mineralogical study of ceramic findings from Mary City - Turkmenistan

This study represents a first contribution to a wider project aimed at a scientific characterization of the Turkmenian ceramic production and to a deeper knowledge of the artefact typologies of the Nestorian period. Some ceramic findings were collected near an adobe wall of a Partic building under the ruins of a Nestorian monastery (VIIIeIX century), with the aim to characterize them by different physico-chemical and analytical methodologies on the basis of the employed raw materials and the production technology, verifying and ascertaining differences and analogies with the Persian or other neighbouring ceramic production technologies. The knowledge of the material and technological properties of these findings and the reconstruction of their provenance is another valuable aim of this study, also useful for proposing a historical contextualization.