Physical study of the Cucuteni pottery technology

Most of our knowledge concerning the Cucuteni pottery is based on traditional archaeological methods (typology, style and context analysis) and only a few interdisciplinary studies have been published. As there is a strong interest in revealing the basic pottery technology used by the Cucuteni communities we have investigated a significant number of pottery samples from 22 archaeological sites located in Eastern Romania by several physical analysis techniques: X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by magnetic measurements, including a first-order reversal curve (FORC) diagram study on the samples showing a hysteretic behavior. The main results presented in this study are discussed and compared with actual knowledge on the ancient Cucuteni pottery.