Meteorite Iron Found in Ancient Iberian Treasure

Amid a collection of dazzling gold artifacts from the Iberian Bronze Age, two corroded items may hold the greatest significance.

Meteorite Iron in Ancient Jewelry

Researchers have determined that a faded bracelet and a rusted hollow hemisphere adorned with gold were crafted from iron sourced from meteorites that fell from space, not from earthly metals.

Salvador Rovira-Llorens, who was the head of conservation at the National Archaeological Museum of Spain before retiring, led the discovery and shared it in a paper last year. It reveals that the metalworking skills in Iberia over 3,000 years ago were likely far more advanced than previously thought.

Researchers found the Treasure of Villena, a collection of 66 objects, mostly made of gold, more than 60 years ago in 1963 in what is now Alicante, Spain.It has since become one of the most significant examples of Bronze Age goldsmithing in the Iberian Peninsula and across Europe.

Determining the age of the collection has been tricky, however, due to two items: a small, hollow hemisphere believed to be part of a scepter or sword hilt, and a single bracelet resembling a torc. Both objects appear “ferrous,” meaning they seem to consist of iron.

The Timeline and Iron Age Confusion

In Iberia, the Iron Age—the period when smelted terrestrial iron replaced bronze—didn’t begin until around 850 BCE. Yet, the gold pieces date back to between 1500 and 1200 BCE, raising questions about the place of the iron-like items within the Treasure of Villena.

Interestingly, iron ore from Earth isn’t the only source of malleable iron.Several pre-Iron Age cultures made artifacts from meteorite iron, with one of the most famous being the iron dagger of Pharaoh Tutankhamun. People highly valued these meteorite iron objects.

To differentiate between the two, researchers looked at the nickel content, which is significantly higher in iron from meteorites than in iron from Earth’s crust. They obtained permission from the Municipal Archaeological Museum of Villena to test the two artifacts for nickel content.

They took samples of both objects and used mass spectrometry, which revealed that despite the significant corrosion, the results showed that both the hemisphere and bracelet were crafted from meteorite iron.

Solving the Mystery of the Artifacts’ Origin

This discovery settles the puzzle of how these two pieces fit with the rest of the collection. Researchers dated them to around 1400 to 1200 BCE, aligning them with the time of the other artifacts in the Treasure of Villena.

The researchers suggest that the available data show the cap and bracelet from the Treasure of Villena as the first two items from the Iberian Peninsula attributed to meteoritic iron, consistent with a Late Bronze chronology, before the widespread production of terrestrial iron.

While the corrosion makes the findings inconclusive, the researchers suggest that newer, non-invasive techniques could provide more detailed data, further confirming these results.

Read the original article on: Science Alert

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