This project, established by the Late Antiquity Research Group in 1997 as the
'Byzantine Petrology Project', seeks to
investigate ceramics and construction
materials from the Byzantine Empire, using both macroscopic archaeological
methods (such as pottery typology) and laboratory-based analysis. In the
recently completed first stage of the project (co-directed by Dr Jill Eyers,
then of the Open University), a series of samples from Byzantine ceramics in
British collections were studied to investigate the geological source of their
clays in relation to a typological evaluation of their date and likely place
of origin. Full publication of these results is underway and samples are
currently being sought for a planned second stage of the project in which both
ceramics and construction materials from the same sites would be investigated.