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Continuing looking at this kotyle

The accretions are clearly stuck on, sprayed onto a thin layer of glue on the piece.

In some parts the glue is more than merely thin.

In fact one can see how the piece was held in someones hand when the fake accretions were sprayed on.

Like this.

No fake accretions sprayed onto the part just above the handle: covered by the persons thumb.

Genuine lime accretions do not rub off with water!

Would XRF  (X-ray Fluorescence)  analysis help in determining the nature of the false accretions?

Lots of useful info about this online

(This is not the company I used this time: rather wish I had!)

Test spot 1 = no fake accretions

Test spot 2 =heavy accretions.

Very odd result! Essentially the same in each place.

Si isn't listed as an element here. It may have not been quantified at all or none was detected. However, one must seriously doubt that there is no Si present. Terracotta is usually characterized by Ca and Fe with  Mn, Al, Si, K,  though there can be much variation depending on  the type of   clay. So these results, oddly much the same despite one area heavily covered with accretions and the other  area not, are I suppose  broadly speaking , representative of terracotta but not really at all informative about the nature of the accretions. That was a waste of money!

Let us remove some of the accretions for further testing by ATR - FTIR

This is attenuated total reflectance Fourier-transformation infrared spectroscopy.

http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Analytical_Chemistry/Instrumental_Analysis/Spectrometer/ATR-FTIR

Lots of explanation on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKEVgroJL0I

ATR-FTIR analysis>>>>>