Yoruba Pottery Objects

This study examined and classified selected Yoruba pottery objects in Ita Yemoo Museum, Ile-Ife, Nigeria collection with a view to determining the elemental content of the clay material used in order to determine the material contents of the pottery objects thereby establishing their ‘chemical finger prints’; a view to suggesting provenance postulates for the pottery objects in Ita Yemoo Museum collection, Ile-Ife. A sample size of twenty–four (24) pottery objects which constituted about ten percent (10%) of the entire collection was selected using systematic random sampling. The technique of Proton-induced X-Ray Emission (PIXE) was adopted for material content analysis; the PIXE analysis indicated the presence of twenty-three (23) elements which constituted the ‘chemical fingerprints’ for the twenty-four (24) pottery objects. The study concluded data similarities, differences, and correlation provided enhanced re-classification of the selected pottery objects for taxonomic description and the possibility of generating a database for the purpose of identifying pottery objects in Ita Yemoo pottery museum and that of Yoruba pottery objects.