Among the Iberian Bronze Century Golden Treasures, a couple corrosion can be the most expensive of all.
Scientists found, not metal from the ground, but from under the ground, and from the meteorites that fell from heaven, there are fake bracelets and rusty a hollow hemisphere decorated with gold.
The discovery, led by the head of the retired preservation at the Spanish National Museum of Archeology, Salvador Rovira-Lloorenso, was revealed in last year’s document and shows that in Iberry, metalworking technologies and methods in Iberry were more than 3,000 years ago, much more advanced than we thought.
Villana’s treasure, as the 66 most gold objects cache was known, was found more than 60 years ago in 1963, now Alicante in Spain, and has since been considered one of the most important examples of the Bronze Age Golden Blacksmiths on the Iberian Peninsula and all over Europe.
However, thanks to the two objects, it was a bit difficult to determine the age of the collection: two objects: a small, hollow hemisphere, which is believed to be part of a scepter or sword suspension; And one, torc similar bracelet. Both have what archaeologists have described as the appearance of an “iron” – that is, they seem to be made of iron.
On the Iberian Peninsula, the Iron Age – where it began to replace the ground iron bronze – began only about 850 m. Pr. BC. The problem is that the golden materials were dated from 1500 to 1200. Pr. BC. So, where possible, where the artifacts of iron in the context of Villena treasure are a puzzle.
But the iron ore from the Earth’s crust is not the only source of the martial iron. There are quite a few in the world before iron iron artifacts that have been fake from meteorites. Probably the most famous is the meteorite iron dagger of Pharaoh Tutanchamun, but the material contains other bronze -age weapons, and they were highly valued.
There is a way to say the difference: Iron of meteorites nickel is much larger than iron excavated from Earth. Thus, the researchers received a permit from the Wilena Municipal Archeology Museum, which contains the collection, to carefully test two artifacts and determine how much they have a nickel.
They were carefully taken by the examples of both artifacts and, to determine their composition, the material to the mass spectrometry. Despite the high degree of corrosion, which changes the elementary artifact makeup, the results clearly show that both the hemisphere and the bracelet were made of meteorite iron.
This is neatly solved by the dilemma of both artefacts corresponding to the rest of the collection: they were made at about the same period, dating back to around 1400-1200. Pr. BC.
“The available data show that the CAP and bracelet from the treasure trove of Villena would currently be the first two pieces attributable to a meteoric Iberian Iberian Peninsula,” explains the researchers in their document, which is compatible with the late bronze chronology before the extensive ground iron production begins. “
Because objects are so bad corrosion, the results are not convincing. However, there are the latest non -invasive methods that can be applied to objects to obtain a more detailed data set that will help to strengthen the conclusions.
The conclusions were published Prehistoric work;
The previous version of this article was published in 2024. February