Abstract
Chemical treatment of metal artifacts to determine their composition was one of the first applications of science to archaeology. In this chapter, various chemical and isotopic analytical techniques are described as they relate to the study of ancient metals. In addition, the problems and pitfalls of such analyses, especially as they relate to attempts to assign “provenance” to ancient artifacts, are discussed. In general, the chemical and isotopic analysis of metal artifacts as well as metallurgical artifacts (e.g., crucibles and slags) is essential for reconstructing the ancient technological process.
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Notes
- 1.
It is important to note whether results are expressed in atomic or weight %. Atomic % denotes the percentage of the total number of atoms in a sample that are of a particular element. Weight % denotes what percentage of the mass of the sample each element contributes. If an archaeometallurgy paper does not explicitly state which system has been used, with caution, it can be assumed the results are in weight %.
- 2.
Bear in mind that, with at least 93 naturally occurring elements in the Periodic Table, no analysis containing fewer elements can truly claim to be ‘fully quantitative’!
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Pollard, A., Bray, P. (2014). Chemical and Isotopic Studies of Ancient Metals. In: Roberts, B., Thornton, C. (eds) Archaeometallurgy in Global Perspective. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9017-3_10
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