Towards the setting up of an archaeometric data bank of the pottery produced in Italy

The aim of this paper is to present a project recently set up at the Free University of Berlin (Institute of Classical Archaeology) concerning the creation of a chemical data bank of archaeological ceramics produced in Italy (with particular reference to the classical age, but also including data on ceramics of medieval times). The core part of such data bank consists of chemical data (X-ray fluorescence method) obtained in the past at the «Laboratoire de Céramologie» of Lyon (M. Picon) and data acquired by chemical analyses carried out at the «Arbeitsgruppe Archaometrie» of Berlin (projects by G. Olcese).