Royal Delicacy: Material Study of Iron Age Bullae from Jerusalem

The application of optical mineralogy (OM, often dubbed petrography) for ceramic studies in archaeology is celebrating now almost eight decades since its introduction. Over the years, it established as one of the most common scientific methods in archaeology, due to its availability and impressive track record. Even the introduction of elemental methods for provenancing ceramics, such as Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA), has not affected the use of OM due to its ability to supply a wide range of technological as well as provenance data. However, the method has always been limited by its destructive nature, restricting the analyses of delicate artefacts.