Archaeologists focusing on the Neolithic periods,especially those interested in provenance studies,pay great attention to pottery production loci and raw materials.Although thin-section petrography was applied to the study of ancient ceramics in the 1930s to explore the pottery production loci and distribution routes,the provenance studies of pottery were widely applied only after the 1950s when instrumental multi-elemental analysis was introduced to archaeology.In particular,the combination of multi-elemental analysis and thin-section petrography laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for boosting the provenance studies of ancient ceramic materials.The'Provenience Postulate'was proposed in the 1970s,followed by the integration of chemical analysis and thin-section petrography as a standardized methodology in the 1990s,signaling breakthroughs in provenancing ceramics.It is argued in this paper that while researchers applied provenance studies to address important archaeological questions,they often used or introduced assumptions that are neither proven nor well discussed,in addition to the Provenience Postulate.These other assumptions were derived from the functional use,techno-stylistic,ecological,political-economic,and/or geochemical perspective but have barely been contextualized.By examining five of these assumptions underlying provenance studies involving chemical compositional analysis and thin-section petrography,the present paper points out the relations between assumptions and archaeological interpretations,hopefully offering new insights for future provenance studies of pottery.
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