Let alone the problems introduced by the processing.... I would have thought silver
provenancing is somewhere close to the worst case scenario.
I suspect any progress will be down to the interpretation of the stamp.
The problems that Rob refers to are very real. To advance provenancing through
geochemical techniques we need good run of the mill materials to analyse. For instance, my
own work on iron has often involved scavenging the beds of pony tracks for materials fallen
from the panniers - that way you know the material you are analysing is broadly
representative of material going from mine to furnace (although further selection of ore might
have been been done at the furance, so even then...) or we need to analyse product from a
known source. So to turn this on its head, analysis of the silver *might* be useful to future
practitioners, once the historians have worked out what the stamp means!
Tim
On 19 Mar 2010 at 9:12, Rob Ixer wrote:
> I too wonder to what geochem. data base any analysis would be usefully
> compared. KCD is too vague.
> The problem with much archy geochem is that there is rarely any comparable
> geological data so the conclusions are fudged.
> Rob Ixer
--
Dr Tim Young
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