minerals Commentary Breaking Preconceptions: Thin Section Petrography For Ceramic Glaze Microstructures Roberta Di Febo 1,2,3,*, Lluís Casas 4 , Jordi Rius 5, Riccardo Tagliapietra 6 and Joan Carles Melgarejo 7 1 Dept. de Ciències de l’Antiguitat i Edad Mitjana, Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Edifici B, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain 2 Institut Català d’Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC), Unitat d’Estudis Arqueomètrics (UEA), Plaça d’en Rovellat, s/n, 43003 Tarragona, Spain 3 U Science Tech, MECAMAT group, University of Vic—Central University of Catalonia, C. De la Laura 13, 08500 Catalonia, Spain 4 Departament de Geologia, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain;
[email protected] 5 Institute de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC), Campus de la UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain;
[email protected] 6 Renishaw S.p.A Via dei Prati 5, 10044 Pianezza (TO), Italia;
[email protected] 7 Departament de Mineralogia, Petrologia i Geologia Aplicada, Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Universitat de Barcelona, Martí i Franquès s/n, 08028 Barcelona, Spain;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +34-977-249-133 Received: 16 December 2018; Accepted: 12 February 2019; Published: 15 February 2019 Abstract: During the last thirty years, microstructural and technological studies on ceramic glazes have been essentially carried out through the use of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) combined with energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX). On the contrary, optical microscopy (OM) has been considered of limited use in solving the very complex and fine-scale microstructures associated with ceramic glazes.