The use of mineralogical indicators for the assessment of firing temperature in fired-clay bodies Viani, Alberto Cultrone , Giuseppe V. Sotiriadis, Konstantinos Ševčík, Radek Šašek, Petr Fired-clay bricks X-ray diffraction analysis Rietveld method Firing temperature Amorphous fraction This research was supported by the project No. LO1219 under the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czech Republic and the research project MAT2016-75889-R of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Fired-clay bricks are frequently object of conservative actions aimed at the preservation of cultural heritage. Information on firing conditions is relevant for the production of custom made replacement bricks, since, as a widely accepted principle, they should be close match to the pre-existing ones. In this work, the mineralogical and microstructural evolution of fired-clay bodies is described using a combination of analytical techniques, and an approach for the assessment of firing temperature using calibration curves built from the results of X-ray powder diffraction quantitative phase analysis with the Rietveld method, is presented. The weight fractions of hematite, mullite and the amorphous fraction, from two raw clays fired in the laboratory at different temperatures, have been used to assess the firing temperature of two industrially produced bricks. The values derived applying these three methods were in good agreement with the nominal temperatures of the industrial cycles. This approach might be of interest for the assessment of the firing conditions of a broader range of historical/archaeological fired-clay materials. 2025-05-30T10:53:05Z 2025-05-30T10:53:05Z 2018-10 journal article A. Viani et al. Applied Clay Science, 163, 108-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clay.2018.07.020 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/104364 10.1016/j.clay.2018.07.020 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier