Enhancing the Database of Archaeological Ceramic Analysis by Combining Portable Handheld XRF and PIXE Measurements

Proton‐induced x‐ray emission (PIXE) has been shown to be a valuable technique to characterize materials across disciplines and has gained interest in archaeological applications because of its nondestructive nature and the accurate elemental composition information it provides. X‐ray fluorescence (XRF), like PIXE, is a technique based on x‐ray emission spectroscopy; however, in its portable or handheld (hhXRF or pXRF) configuration, it can additionally offer the possibility of performing faster and on‐site measurements. The aim of this work is to provide, through a comparison to PIXE, further validation of the suitability of pXRF to characterize archaeological ceramics. As such, a PIXE and XRF comparative study was conducted on 42 sherds of archaeological ceramics from the Tyre historical site in South Lebanon. It was found that, under certain sample preparation conditions (thick disc pellets), a good correlation was obtained between pXRF and PIXE in the composition of commonly detected elements that are usually used to support statistical grouping of ceramics. This confirms the potential of combining both techniques to expand archaeological ceramic databases. Challenges and possible improvements related to the pXRF analyses are also presented.