Graph theory applied to Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy for the preliminary clustering of archaeological pottery

The Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) is a methodology of investigation relatively fast and virtually non-destructive (Bertolini et al., 2006). Actually, it is an open system that can lend itself to many different applications and that can be integrated with other different methods for investigation of chemical elements. This technique is interesting for archeology for its ability to go in situ and its non-destructiveness (Ferretti et al., 2007), but also for the actual representation of the results obtained. In this paper, we applied the Graph Theory (GT) (Grifoni et al., 2016) to obtain a fast preliminary clustering of archaeological pottery. We have sampled and analyzed 32 fragments of pottery coming from the Neolithic site of Settefonti, Prata d'Ansidonia (AQ). The ceramic fragments all belong to the advanced stage of the culture of Ripoli (Ripoli III) in which the Settefonti site is a regional aspect very close to that already identified in Paterno. We have investigated the fragments by LIBS for the acquisition of spectra, which represent the total chemical composition of the analyzed samples. We compared the results obtained by this method with those obtained by the reading of the thin sections made by the same fragments. The results are discussed in a critical way in order to be able to understand whether the LIBS combined with the GT can be useful for a preliminary archaeometric clustering and if the results provided are in accord with petrographic results.