Overview Located in the Korçë Basin close to the border between Greece, Albania and FYRO Macedonia, 820 m above sea level. Sovjan’s stratigraphic sequence spans the Early Neolithic to the Iron Age and thus holds an important place in the archaeology of the south-western Balkans. he French-Albanian excavations at Sovjan (1993 to 2006 by the Institute of Archaeology in Tirana and the French School at Athens) revealed the remains of wooden pile dwellings dating to the Bronze and Iron Age. hese are similar to earlier structures from the nearby Maliq, a well-known site with which Preliminary Results Some preliminary observations are available. he few scanned Mycenaean sherds show a higher level of Cr for the painted areas compared to undecorated surfaces, a relation that is also found in the Fe content. his is also the case with some matt painted pottery, while other sherds of matt painted pottery have signiicantly lower Cr levels of more equal proportions between painted and unpainted areas. A thorough exploration of this subject is currently conducted as this is a preliminary observation. While elements like K, Fe, Ca, Mn, Cr, Ti, Sr, Rb and Zr occurred in all 995 readings, other elements, for example Ag and Mo, are less common. he systematic occurrence of these elements in a small number of pots with design diferences could help indicate if they are possible imports or local “experiments”. Possible compositional overlaps between diferent decorated groups can so far be observed in some cases, but must be conirmed as the analytical work progress. Pottery at Sovjan here is a line of typological and technological continuity throughout the Bronze- and Early Iron Age pottery production of Sovjan. Despite well documented interregional contacts for the entire Bronze Age (Gori 2015) a great diversity in terms of wares and decorated pottery is only found at Sovjan from the second half of the 2 nd to the beginning of the 1 st mill. BC: matt painted, plastic, incised and pointed decoration and imported Mycenaean pottery, as well as channeled ware and proto-Corinthian pottery (Krapf 2014; Lera, Oberweiler and Touchais 2011, 46) are now attested. Most of these can be deined as ine wares. hese, like for example the LBA matt painted pottery, have a wide distribution in the Northern Aegean and Southern Balkans. Equally, the pyraunoi, a type of portable cooking stove that was also subject to a test analysis, is found in a larger region but was probably locally produced (Krapf 2014, Horejs 2005). Typological and technological analyses of the Sovjan pottery assemblage are ongoing (Gori and Krapf, forthcoming), and from 2015, a pilot exploratory pXRF study has been implemented. he overarching aims are as follows: 1– Do groupings of pottery based on macroscopic examination, decoration, types and stratigraphy match groups deined by chemical elements? 2– Can compositional diferences be observed at diferent parts of the pots, i.e. handle vs body? Do painted surfaces on Iron Age pottery show a diferent chemical composition, as inferred for by e.g. Papadopoulou et al. (2007) in regards to neolithic northern Greek pottery? 3– Can the chemistry, as observed with pXRF, help identify overarching traits of local clay recipes, and can indications of imported pottery be found amongst consistent occurrences of uncommon elements? 4– Can the results of the exploratory survey here presented serve as a vantage point for a focused campaign with the means of INAA? Future Research Perspectives his pilot exploratory survey has proved very helpful for assessing the applicability of pXRF for characterising the prehistoric pottery from Sovjan and for exploring several key questions of this assemblage, yielding information on painted decoration, on clay recipes and on imported vs. local pottery. At present, the data hitherto collected is being analyzed. Bronze- and Early Iron Age ceramics from Epirus are also being collected to increase the scope of the study. Within the framework of the current project, a brief survey of clays in the Korçë area will be conducted to improve the understanding of the pottery of Sovjan. A follow-up study is projected to include INAA analyses and petrography. A key question will be to see if the groupings produced by the current pXRF survey can be conirmed by other methods and if they can serve as a vantage point for future work. Characterising Bronze and Early Iron Age ceramics of Sovjan (SE Albania) with the use of pXRF-scanning. Ole Christian Aslaksen ( University of Gothenburg ); Maja Gori ( University of Heidelberg ); Tobias Krapf ( Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece ) References Preliminary reports from the Sovjan excavation are published in the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique Aimers, J.J., Farthing, D.J. and Shugar, A.N. (2012). Handheld XRF analysis of Maya ceramics: a pilot study presenting issues related to quantiication and calibration. In A.N. Shugar and J.L. Mass (eds.) Handheld XRF for art and archaeology. Studies in Archaeological Science 3. 423—448. Leuven University Press. Leuven. Bergman, J. and Lindahl, A. (2016). Optimising archaeologic ceramics XRF analyses. In hió-Henestrosa and Fernández, J.A.M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 6th international workshop on compositional data analysis. 29—37. Girona: Universitat de Girona. Feuer, B., and Schneider, G. (2003). Chemical Analysis and Interpretation of Mycenaean Pottery from hessaly. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16(2), 217-247. Frahm, E. (2013). Validity of “of-the-shelf ” handheld portable XRF for sourcing Near Eastern obsidian chip debris. Journal of Archaeological Science 40(2), 1080-1092. Frahm, E. and Doonan , R.C. (2013). he technological versus methodological revolution of portable XRF in archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Science 40(2), 1425-1434. Buxeda I Garrigós, J., Jones, R.E., Kilikoglou, V., Levi, S.T., Maniatis, Y., Mitchell, J., Vagnetti, L., Wardle, K.A. and Andreou, S. (2003). Technology Transfer at the Periphery of the Mycenaean World: he Cases of Mycenaean Pottery Found in Central Macedonia (Greece) and the Plain of Sybaris (Italy). Archaeometry, 45: 263–284. Gori, M. (2015). Along the Rivers and hrough the Mountains. A reviewed chrono- cultural framework for the south-western Balkans during the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BCE. Universitätsforschungen zur Prähistorischen Archäologie. Bonn: Habelt. Gori, M. and Krapf, T. ( forthcoming). he Bronze and Iron Age Pottery from Sovjan, Iliria. Horejs, B. (2005). Kochen am Schnittpunkt der Kulturen – zwischen Karpatenbecken und Ägäis. In: B. Horejs, R. Jung, E. Kaiser and B. Teržan (eds.) Interpretationsraum Bronzezeit. Bernhard Hänsel von seinen Schülern gewidmet. Universitätsforschungen zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 121. 71- 94. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt. Iordanidis, A., J. Garcia-Guinea, and Karamitrou-Mentessidi, G. (2009). Analytical study of ancient pottery from the archaeological site of Aiani, northern Greece. Materials Characterization 60(4), 292-302. Krapf, T. (2014). he Late Bronze Age Pottery of Macedonia: Comparisons with the Plain of Korçë. In E. Stefani, N. Meroussis and A. Dimoula (eds.) A Century of Research in Prehistoric Macedonia, 1912-2012, International Conference Proceedings, Archaeological Museum of hessaloniki 22-24 November 2012. 585-597. hessaloniki: Archaeological Museum. Lera, P., Oberweiler, C. and Touchais, G. (2011). Le passage du bronze récent au fer ancien sur le site de Sovjan (bassin de Korçë, Albanie): nouvelles données chronologiques. In Lamboley, J.-L. and M.P. Castiglioni (eds.) L'Illyrie Meridionale et l'Epire dans l'Antiquité V: Actes du Ve colloque international de Grenoble (8-11 octobre 2008). Volume 1. 41-52. Paris: De Boccard. Mommsen, H., Kreuser, A., Weber, J. and Podzuweit, Ch. (1989). Classiication of Mycenaean Pottery from Kastanas by Neutron Activation Analysis. In Y. Maniatis (ed.) Archaeometry, Proceedings of the 25th International Symposium. 515-523. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Oikonomou, A., Stamoulis, K., Lera, P., Oikonomidis, St., Papayiannis, A., Tsonos, A., Papachristodoulou, C. and Ioannides, K. (2012). Optically stimulated luminescence chronology and characterisation of pottery sherds from Maligrad, Albania. In Scott, R., Braekmans, D. Carremans, M. and P. Degryse (eds.) Proceedings of the 39th International Symposium for Archaeometry 28. 60-65. Leuven: Centre for Archaeological Sciences. Papadopoulou, D., Sakalis, A., Merousis, N. and Tsirliganis N.C. (2007). Study of decorated archeological ceramics by micro X-ray luorescence spectroscopy. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment 580(1), 743-746. Speakman, R.J. and Shackley, M.S. (2013). Silo science and portable XRF in archaeology: a response to Frahm. Journal of Archaeological Science 40(2), 1435-1443. Map of archaeological sites in the Korçë basin (Map: Ole Aslaksen. Data source: WARG, courtesy David Hill, University of Oslo). Methodology Several compositional studies on pottery have been conducted in the southern Balkans using various methods (Mommsen et al. 1989; Buxeda I Garrigos et al. 2003.; Feuer and Schneider 2007; Iordanis et al. 2007; Oikonomou et al. 2012). pXRF has been subject to critical discussions (Speakman and Shackley 2013; Frahm 2013; Frahm and Doonan 2013), particularly in regards to its applicability to pottery (Aimers, Farthing and Shugar 2012, 423; Liritzis and Zacharias 2011, 119). For the purpose of the here presented project, we found three major advantages with pXRF scanning: 1- It can be conducted without having to move the pottery or extract samples. 2- Whole pots as well as sherds can be scanned. 3- pXRF is cost eicient in the sense that an extra reading of a sherd does not increase the total costs, something which makes the method suitable for exploratory work. A total of 210 sherds were analysed with a hermo Niton XL3t Goldd+ pXRF scanner (mounted on a SmartStand). he device has 4 ilters which we ran for a total of 380 seconds per scanned point, using the Mining Cu/Zn setting (in accordance with Bergman and Lindahl 2016). Ba, Sb, Sn, Cd, Pd, Ag, Bal, Mo, Nb, Zr, Sr, Rb, Bi, As, Se, Au, Pb, W, Zn, Cu, Ni, Co, Fe, Mn, Cr, V, Ti, Ca, K, Al, P, Si, Cl, S and Mg were included. he integrated CCD camera of the device was used to ind suitable lat areas free of large visible inclusions. On each pot or sherd, 2-11 points were scanned to produce average values, covering as much of the pot as possible. 995 readings were collected, representative of the whole assemblage from Early Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. Following Bergman and Lindahl (2016) a series of discrete fresh breaks were made as this may enhance the readings of the fabrics. Sherds were carefully cleaned with a brush, and when needed, sparse amounts of de-mineralized water. he fresh breaks were in addition photographed using a Dynolite microscope to maximize the output (AD7013MZT 10- 70x). Comparing fresh breaks with surface and older breaks on the same fragments may allow us to see if a systematic diference can be observed. We used the NIST 2709a PP 180-649 reference material. Sovjan shares similarities in terms of material culture, including ceramics (Gori 2015, 187–193; Krapf 2014, 585-586). he exploratory study conducted with portable (handheld) XRF (pXRF) here presented is a joint cooperation between the French–Albanian Archaeological Mission in the Korçë Basin and the project Aesthetics and Mobility in the Bronze Age Balkans (University of Gothenburg, 2015-2017) funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Acknowledgments Mission archéologique franco-albanaise du bassin de Korçë: P. Lera, C. Oberweiler and G. Touchais. he bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. University of Gothenburg/Rich Potter. Imported Mycenaean painted pottery (Photo: Philippe Collet). Pyraunos cooking pot (Photo: Tobias Krapf). Matt painted sherd: section and detail (Photos: Tobias Krapf). Authors Ole Christian Aslaksen ole.christian.aslaksen@gu.se University of Gothenburg Maja Gori maja.gori@zaw.uni-heidelberg.de University of Heidelberg Tobias Krapf tobias.krapf@gmail.com Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece Storage room in Korçë (Photo: Petrika Lera). Analyses with pXRF showed diferent frequency of occurence of elements (Table: Ole Aslaksen).