MAGNETIZATION OF SHARDS AS AN ASSISTANCE TO THE RECONSTRUCTION OF POTTERY VESSELS
R. J. P. Burnham, Donald Harvey Tarling · Studies in Conservation · 1975
When pottery vessels are fired, they acquire a magnetization that is uniformly parallel with the ambient field in which they cool. If the vessels are subsequently broken, each shard retains its original magnetization which can be used either to supplement jigsaw fitting, particularly if several hundred shards are available from the same vessel, or to evaluate the shape of the original vessel when only a few, non-adjacent shards are available.