Banda sherd tempers
for a detailed report on the Banda tempers see Dickinson (2005: 121-4); the
following is extracted from that report. Peter Lape provided sherds from the
island of Bandaneira and Ay. The most abundant temper type in the Banda
sherds is pyroxene-bearing feldspathic sand embedded in clay pastes that
contain a significant component of volcanic ash in the form of curvilinear and
branching vitroclastic shards of felsic volcanic glass. Most abundant among
the sand grains of the tempers are pumiceous glassy volcanic lithic fragments
probably derived from volcanic source rocks closely related petrologically to
the pyroclastic debris within the clay pastes. The tempers are appropriate in
mineralogical composition for derivation from the volcanic assemblage of
banda, and the volcanic ash in the clay pastes was presumably derived from
pyroclastic blankets that mantle islands of Banda. Much of the volcanic sand
used for temper may well have been reworked from coarse ash deposits, but
the moderately sorted and abraded (subangular to subrounded) character of
te temper sands suggests that they were collected from stream deposits.