Radioluminescence study of surface and ceramic body of lustred majolicas

Radioluminescence (RL), the light emission observed during the excitation of a material by ionising radiation, has been applied to a set of ceramic samples, chosen as representatives of the three main classes of lustred majolicas: Egyptian Fatimid (the tenth to eleventh centuries), Hispano-Moresque (the eleventh to fourteenth centuries) and Italian (the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries). Before the RL characterisation, all the samples were dated by thermoluminescence. The present study was aiming at characterising the three components of the lustred ceramics: the ceramic body, the glaze and the surface lustre, in order to find, if any, the RL associated emissions.