A compositional study of a museum jewellery collection (7th–1st BC) by means of a portable XRF spectrometer

Within the framework of the project “Jewelmed” (ICA3-1999-10020), the chemical composition of 34 gold and four silver jewels was examined. These jewels belong to the Benaki museum's collection in Athens, Greece and are dating from the 7th to the 1st century BC. The compositional analysis of the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section B, Beam interactions with materials and atoms Vol. 226; no. 1; pp. 15 - 28
Main Authors Karydas, A.G., Kotzamani, D., Bernard, R., Barrandon, J.N., Zarkadas, Ch
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 01.11.2004
Subjects
Ancient metallurgy
Gold–silver jewellery
Portable instrumentation
Quantitative analysis
XRF
Ancient metallurgy
Gold–silver jewellery
XRF
Portable instrumentation
Quantitative analysis
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Summary:Within the framework of the project “Jewelmed” (ICA3-1999-10020), the chemical composition of 34 gold and four silver jewels was examined. These jewels belong to the Benaki museum's collection in Athens, Greece and are dating from the 7th to the 1st century BC. The compositional analysis of the jewels was performed by means of a “home-made” portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer. The XRF results have shown that the gold jewels can be categorized in two groups, which include artifacts made by native and by high purity gold, respectively. For the silver jewels the results have provided interesting information regarding the manufacturing technology, the authenticity of the jewels and the raw materials used. The potential and the limitations of the XRF technique, applied in the chemical analysis of archaeological metal artifacts, are also discussed.
ISSN:0168-583X
1872-9584
DOI:10.1016/j.nimb.2004.02.034