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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 10 2017, @11:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the metals-from-heaven dept.

Bronze Age artifacts used meteoric iron

The Iron Age began in Anatolia and the Caucasus around 1200 BCE. But nearly 2,000 years earlier, various cultures were already fashioning objects out of iron. These items were extremely rare and always greatly treasured. Iron ore abounds on the Earth's surface. So what made these artifacts so valuable? Initial research had shown that some were made with iron from meteorites, which led scientists to wonder how many others were. Albert Jambon gathered the available data and conducted his own nondestructive chemical analyses of samples using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. His collection of iron artifacts includes beads from Gerzeh (Egypt, −3200 BCE); a dagger from Alaca Höyük (Turkey, −2500 BCE); a pendant from Umm el-Marra (Syria, −2300 BCE); an axe from Ugarit (Syria, −1400 BCE) and several others from the Shang dynasty civilization (China, −1400 BCE); and the dagger, bracelet, and headrest of Tutankhamen (Egypt, −1350 BCE).

Also at New Atlas and BGR.

Bronze Age iron: Meteoritic or not? A chemical strategy. (DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2017.09.008) (DX)


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @04:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 11 2017, @04:41PM (#608316)

    There are two sources of iron: ore and metal. Ore is rock from which iron can be extracted by smelting, a process that requires some know-how and work; metallic iron comes pre-smelted (thanks, universe) and is much easier to work. That's important because metallic iron was available as a material to people who had not yet learned to smelt iron from ore.
    Of the metallic iron found in the earth's crust, there are again two sources: telluric (native to Earth) and meteoric. There's only one telluric source, and it's way up in Greenland. The rest of the metallic iron available to humans is meteoric.
    The word "meteoric" in the summary and headline is a bit misleading, because it's being used as a synonym for the ore vs. metal distinction. Really, the researchers just determined that iron ore smelting was not a bronze age technology, which would have been common sense to any archaeologist you might have wished to ask.