Estudos de proveniência em sítios arqueológicos da região de Araruama do estado do Rio de Janeiro

The present work shows the results of provenience studies for ceramics collected at São José, Morro Grande, Serrano and Bela Vista archaeological site in Araruama region in Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil. The clays used in this study were collected in the same region. The elemental chemical composition were detemined in ceramic and clay samples by INAA allowing the simultaneous determination of twenty five elements, most of them at trace level. The studies of classification and provenience were made by multivariate statistical methods. The Euclidean distance and the hierarchical means in the ward subroutine were used in cluster analysis. Besides, dilution effect was also taken into account to verify the relation between clays and the different groups defined.The results of the cluster analysis and of the average dilution factor calculated for each on of the clays in relation to each group defined show that ceramics without decorations from São José have a closer chemical composition with the clay collected at the closest point at Morro Grande, denominated as Córrego Cambuci. The elements Co, Cr, Hf, Ta, Ti e SB show smaller concentration in the ceramic, suggesting that in some way those elements are lost during fabrication or probaby are diluted by the addition of temper or other materials