Hello Bjorn,

You say the gilding is 80% Au and 4% Hg.  What is the composition of the
other 16%.

The composition of the gilding makes me think that perhaps a native
alloy was used.  Nuggets were taken from a placer or removed from a
milled vein occurrence and used without further refining.

Here is another take on where the Hg came from.  In either the case of
placer mining or milling a vein deposit, the material can be run through
a sluice box with mercury used to trap the gold.  So if this process was
used and the gold was beat into leaf form, without there being some
processing on it to clean off the mercury used to extract the gold, then
maybe some of the mercury was left adhering to the gold leaf.  I don't
know if this could account for a 4% Hg content or not.  Seems a bit high
for this scenario.  Does anyone have a comment on how much mercury
contamination could occur this way?


Can you provide an image of the pendant?

Bart Torbert
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-----Original Message-----
From: Arch-Metals Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
Bjorn Hjulstrom
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 4:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: gilded viking age pendant

At an excavation of a viking age mound in middle Sweden I found a gilded

pendant. When I discussed the gilding with collegues we cannot agree on 
the method used and I was recommended to try this forum.
Before I describe the pendant I must appologize that I do not know all
the 
correct terms in english but I think I can make myself understood
anyway.

The material of the pendant is silver. The gold surface consists of ca.
80%
Au, some other elements and 4%Hg. The mercury implies that the it was 
gilded using heat to unite with the silver. However, when looking at the

pendant it seems at it is some kind of gold leaf. The gold is clearly 
separated from the silver and at some places it has come off as gold
flake.

So the question is what technique was used. Can gilding including heat 
still making the gold peel off because of it was only uniting with the 
surface of the silver, wich possibly was not clean. Or is it possible
that 
some kind of gold leaf was used and pressed on to the pendants.

I would be grateful for comments.