Dear Colleagues,
The Broighter analyses are part of a huge project on prehistoric gold in
Europe carried out by Axel Hartmann as part of the SAM project.
The references are:-
A. Hartmann, 1970: Prähistorische Goldfunde aus Europa I, Studien zu den
Anfängen der Metallurgie, Bd 3, (Berlin: Grebr. Mann Verlag)
and
A. Hartmann, 1982: Prähistorische Goldfunde aus Europa II, Studien zu
den Anfängen der Metallurgie, Bd 5, (Berlin: Grebr. Mann Verlag)
At the very least, then the Broighter analyses have been in the public
domain since 1982. There are, I believe, some further unpublished
analyses from this project. The enterprise was mainly concerned with the
Bronze Age but a certain amount of Iron Age material was done. More Iron
Age gold alloy analyses will emerge in the medium term with the
publication of all the material from Snettisham. This procfess is under
way but there is a great deal of statistics etc. to do on the analyses
as a great amount of helpful information is contained therein.
Returning to the Broighter analyses, the presence of platinum
differentiates the Iron Age gold from Bronze Age gold in Ireland. There
have been recent attacks on the problem of provenancing Irish gold
objects using trace elements but there is now a swing toewards the
analysis of the silver content and of non-metallic inclusions as being
more helpful. There has, I believe, been some success in provenancing
the earliest Bronze Age gold but later in the Bronze Age recycling and
re-alloying played an important role so provenancing may be impossible
at that stage. For the Iron Age material with platinum the source is
clearly different but I am not aware of progress in identifying it.
Yours,
Peter Northover
--
Dr Peter Northover,
Materials Science-Based Archaeology Group,
Department of Materials, University of Oxford
Tel +44 (0)1865 283721; Fax +44 (0)1865 841943 Mobile +44 (0)7785 501745
e-mail [log in to unmask]
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