Petrography or traded from elsewhere. This kind of information, along with other evidence, can support conclusions about settlement patterns, group and individual mobility, social contacts, and trade networks. In addition, an understanding of how certain minerals are altered at specific temperatures can allow archaeological petrographers to infer aspects of the ceramic production process itself, such as minimum and maximum temperatures reached during the original firing of the pot. Petrography Petrography is a branch of petrology that focuses on detailed descriptions of rocks. Someone who studies petrography is called a petrographer. The mineral content and the textural relationships within the rock are
Ceramic petrography in the prehistoric Aegean. In the USA the approach is less popular, though important contributions have been made in the area of quantitative petrography. Other attempts to extend ceramic petrography include the use of automated image analysis, the palaeontological analysis of microscopic fossils within ceramic thin sections and the combined statistical classification of petrographic and chemical data from artefacts. Thin section archaeological petrography can be applied to a range of other artefact types in addition to ceramics; these include plaster, mortar, mudbricks and lithic implements. Academic papers on ceramic petrography are often published in journals such as Archaeometry, Journal of