Compositional Analysis of Ancient Bricks at Site 2211 ,

Archaeological research at Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 2211) which is located at Pengkalan Bujang, Kedah was conducted in 2008 and was carried out by researchers from the National University of Malaysia (UKM). The site is believed to be a new site because based on the Quaritch-Wales report, the site based on its location is not in the report that was published by Quaritch-Wales. Based on its orientation of northeast-southwest, which is the same orientation as Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 22), hence this Candi or temple was of the Buddhist religion and was constructed between the 11 century to the 13 century AD. Composition analysis of bricks at this site was conducted to determine whether the source of the raw material is local, namely clay or otherwise. The technique used is the X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) technique to determine the mineral phases of the bricks and also the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) technique to determine the major element and trace element content of the bricks. The mineral content found in the ancient bricks of Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 2211) consists of quartz, microcline, muscovite and minor minerals such as albite and geothite. Major element and trace element content also show that the raw materials used were derived from the basin of the Muda River, Bujang River and the surrounding areas of Kota subdistrict. Indirectly, this study proves that local raw material was used to produce bricks at this site.


INTRODUCTION
In 2008, a team of researchers from the National University of Malaysia headed by Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abdul Rahman and assisted by Adi Taha and Zuliskandar Ramli had conducted excavations at Site 2211 which is believed to be a ancient temple (candi).This excavation was assisted by a number of well-trained technical staff and also assisted by the locals.This newly excavated site is located at about 10 meters on the right side of Bujang River and about five hundred meters from the south-western part of Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 19).This temple was not disclosed in the report published by Quaritch-Wales (Quaritch Wales, 1940).The temples at Pengkalan Bujang consist of temples of the Buddhist element, namely Site 21 and Site 22 and temples of the Hindu element, namely Site 18, Site 19 and Site 23 (Quaritch Wales, 1940;Jacq-Hergoualc'h, 1992;Rahman and Yatim, 1990;Zuliskandar, 2012).
If seen from this structure, it is similar to the temple at Site 22. On the whole, this temple was built using bricks.The size of the bricks here is varied and  and there are two walls on the outer and the inner parts of the structure; they are separated by a floor structure with 3 layers of bricks between them.It is believed that the inner wall is a structure devoted to placing sculptures.
Among the archaeological discoveries found at this site are earthenware and ceramic pottery of the Song Dynasty and Ming Dynasty.Ceramic artefacts of the Ming Dynasty were found in the upper layer but are not associated with the temple.The Chinese ceramics which are associated with this temple are the ceramics of the Song Dynasty.Among the ceramics found are such as mercury jars, and fragments of the celadon and Qing Pai bowls where these artefacts were produced between the 11th century to the 13 th century AD and the temple is believed to have been built between the 10 th century to the 11th century AD and its use continued until after the 13 th century AD.
A large part of the temple was built of bricks; hence, the brick composition analysis was performed to determine whether these bricks used local raw material or otherwise.A similar study was done on the site of Candi Sungai Mas (Ramli et al., 2012), Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 23) and Candi Bukit Pendiat (Site 17) in which all of them used local raw material (Zuliskandar et al., 2011(Zuliskandar et al., , 2012)).The raw material was taken from the basin of Muda River, Terus River or the Basin of Bujang River.The objective of this study is to determine the mineral content, the major element content and trace element content that are in the bricks of Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 2211).The data obtained will be compared with the composition data of clay around Bujang Valley, Kedah.The initial hypothesis is that the temples at Bujang Valley were constructed using local resources and were built by the local community as a result of acculturation of the Indian culture and knowledge transformation of the Old Kedah Malay community (Zuliskandar, 2012).

MATERIALS AND METHOD
A total of 17 brick samples were taken from the Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 2211) where the samples were labelled PB2211 (i), PB2211 (ii), PB2211 (iii), PB2211 (iv), PB2211 (v), PB2211 (vi), PB2211 (vii), PB2211 (viii), PB2211 (ix), PB2211 (x), PB2211 (xi), PB2211 (xii), PB2211 (xiii), PB2211 (xiv), PB2211 (xv), PB2211 (xvi) and PB2211 (xvii).The samples were then taken to the laboratory to be cleaned and dried.The brick samples were then finely ground and sifted.The samples that had been sieved were then separated for analysis using the X-ray Diffraction (XRD) technique and the X-ray Fluorescence technique.The X-ray Diffraction technique (XRD) was used to identify the mineral content found in the brick samples while the X-ray Fluorescence technique was used to determine the major element and trace element content contained in the brick samples.
The data obtained from the analysis of the major and trace elements will be analyzed using the bi-plot graph or 'scatter plot' graph method.This method uses Microsoft Excel software.Two graphs will be plotted based on the selected major elements and trace elements such as magnesium with titanium and copper with lead.The main purpose is to see the distribution of samples in groups and in turn compare them with the clay element (Ramli et al., 2011a, b).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The mineral content found in the ancient bricks of Candi Pengkalan Bujang (Site 2211) consists of quartz, microcline, muscovite and minor minerals such as albite and geothite (Refer to Table 1).The absence of the kaolinite mineral shows that the bricks at this site were baked between the temperatures of 600ºC to 800ºC.Therefore we suggest that open firing technique was used to produce the bricks.Albite mineral is present in the PB2211 (ii) and PB2211 (xiv) samples while geothite mineral containing iron element is present in the PB2211 (vii) and PB2211 (viii) samples.X-ray diffraction pattern of the Site 2211 brick samples can be referred to in Fig. 3 and 4.

Fig. 1 :
Fig. 1: Overall Structure of Site 2211most have a thickness of more than 6 centimetres.This site is named Site 2211 based on the location of the site which is located on the land lot numbered 2211 (Fig.1 and 2).The structural orientation of this temple is believed to be inclined toward the northeast-southwest.No statues or inscriptions were found that may help to indicate which religious element was practiced at the temple.Excavation has revealed almost the entire site

Fig. 2 :
Fig. 2: Structure of the inner and outer wall parts

Table 1 :
Mineral content of the ancient bricks of Candi Pengkalan Bujang site 2211