Phoenician Pottery in the Western Mediterranean: A New Perspective Based on the Early Iron Age (800–550 BC) Settlement of Sant Jaume (Alcanar, Catalonia)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors

Congratulation on your excellent work. Only a few notes are in the attached pdf.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We want to thank all reviewer's comments that we have followed in many cases.

We have improved Figure 1 and included the final version of Figure 3 in the text (it was already the final version in the pdf file, but not the one included in the text of our first submission).

Reviewer 2 Report

Your manuscript is a good piece of research and it sheds light on ancient pottery manufacturing in the Western Mediterranean in connection to the influence of the Phoenicians who contributed to Andalusia for a considerable time. The documentation and interpretations for the Early Iron Age pottery industry (800-550 BC) together look reasonable. Your manuscript is suitable for the “Applied Sciences” journal and can be accepted pending minor revision.

Please find attached an annotated pdf of your manuscript on which I made some corrections for your use during revision. In the following some specific comments regarding the whole manuscript as well as the supplementary data for electronic publication.

Lines 2-4: The title can be modified as follows: The Phoenician pottery in the Western Mediterranean: A new perspective based on findings in the Early Iron Age (800-550 BC) settlement of Sant Jaume (Alcanar, Catalonia).

Lines 18-32 (Abstract): It is ok but needs more care when you report the analytical techniques such as the x-ray tools and the scanning electron microscopy. Also, when you mention about microscopic examination of samples using the polarized transmitted microscope, it is enough to mention “petrography” and no need to add “thin sections”.

Lines 33-35 (Keywords): As indicated in the annotated pdf, some modifications are needed. For the knowledge of the authors, normally we report the analytical tools in the keywords in an abbreviated form.

In the Introduction Section, Lines 40 and 43: Centuries, e.g. the 8^th, 9^th and 12^th, should be superscripted. Pleas apply for all in the entire text.

Figure 1:It is better if you use color maps instead the B/W ones. Also, put letters a and b for the two inset maps and be sure of the north direction. Hard to read the name of every location. Scale is unreadable. The locations here are crowded and it is recommended if you use numbers instead of full names for the busy area then put an inset numbers key, or alternatively in the figure caption.

 

Line 94: At the end of the introduction section you need to add an important sentence as follows: In order to achieve our goals, we have access to some analytical facilities such as the petrography, x-ray and scanning electron microscopy. The resultant data combination can helps effectively in our interpretations about potteries under investigation.

Line 147: Change characterised to characterized, also in other parts of the text.

Lines 175-184: You need to subscript number of atoms for each molecule.

Line 189: Use weight percent (wt%) instead of mass fraction percentage (w%).

Line 201: Change characterisation to characterization.

Line 216: Change analysed to analysed.

Lines 221 and 232: Change spectroscopy to unit.

Line 269 Table 2: For the analysis of molybdenum (Mo), it is incorrect to report a negative value. You can mention either below limit of detection (b.l.d.) or not detected or determined (n.d.).

Table 2: Place loss on ignition (L.O.I) after the columns of oxides. Also, start the major oxides with silica (SiO2).

Line 290 Table 3: Start the table with silica and separate major oxides from trace elements.

Line 397: You need to add this to the caption of Figure 7: All are taken in crossed-nicols.

Lines 416 and 416: Please pay attention that you should not treat serpentinite as a mineral. It is a metamorphic rock too.

Lines 464 and 467: Remove brackets before degree centigrade.

Line 486: You need to show intensity of the XRD reflections in the form of the Y-axis similar for what you did for the X-axis (2 ceta).

Line 639 Discussion: You need to separate discussion and prepare an independent conclusion sections, preferably in the form of short bullets same as we do for the highlights.

Lines 737-738 Acknowledgements: You need to rephrase and enhance them. Place of the analytical techniques are mentioned in the methodology section. Here you need to thank people who facilitated the laboratory measurements, and probably the persons who helped to collect the pottery samples.

Line 742: References: You need to write all references of textbooks in the same way. Also, you need to follow style of the journal (Applied Sciences) for references because some journal are abbreviated and some are not. Finally, pay some attention for punctuation.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We want to thank all reviewer's comments that we have followed in many cases.

We have improved Figure 1 and included the final version of Figure 3 in the text (it was already the final version in the pdf file, but not the one included in the text of our first submission). In Figure 4, we have changed 'vt' to 'tv'. In Figures 4 and 10, the title is in the upper plot margin, standard in R. In our opinion, it is not necessary to show the y-axes in Figure 9 since we qualitatively use this information. Besides, as stated in the paper, the PXRD raw data presented in this study are available in the CORA.RDR, Research Data Repository (https://dataverse.csuc.cat/) https://doi.org/10.34810/data632.

The order of chemical elements in Tables 2 and 3 was by atomic mass. After the reviewer's request, it is now ordered following the standard employed for rocks whether the sequence of major elements in a data table obeys the valency except for P₂O₅, which is neither an abundant element nor forms the structure of the common igneous rock-forming minerals. The numbers in all oxides are already subscripted in those tables and the text.

Regarding the suggestion of using 'weight percent (wt%)' instead of 'mass fraction percentage (w %)', the former is used for historical tradition. The magnitude is mass, not weight, and the correct term is the mass fraction (symbol w) (IUPAC. Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 2nd ed. (the "Gold Book"). Compiled by A. D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford (1997). Online version (2019-) created by S. J. Chalk. ISBN 0-9678550-9-8. https://doi.org/10.1351/goldbook.) <https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/M03722>.

The use of brackets in providing temperature ranges, for example (800/850) °C,  follows the recommendation from NIST (Thompson, A., Taylor, B. N., 2018, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI), NIST Special Publication 811, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899) that recommends this use or 800 °C  to 850 °C, but not 800 to 850 °C.

We consider that there is no need for a section on 'Conclusions' after the discussion.

In References, some journals are not abbreviated because there are no abbreviated versions and the journal name is always written as a full name.