Thermal analysis and archaeological chronology: the ancient mortars of the site of Baradello (Como, Italy)

Mortar is an artificial material, commonly used since ancient times and widely conserved, in many cases in good conditions, to the present day. In this study, mortars from different structures of the mediaeval site of Baradello (Como, Italy) were analyzed, in order to characterize the materials and to help archaeologists to define a building chronology, only partially hypothesized, so far. Firstly, thin sections were prepared and observed by optical microscopy, then samples were analyzed by TG–DSC, XRD, FTIR and SEM–EDX. TG–DSC proved to be the most useful technique for the purpose, because the treatment of its data pointed out differences between the architectural structures, suggesting a possible building chronology of the site.