Dacian bracelets and Transylvanian gold: ancient history and modern analyses

Abstract

Bogdan Constantinescu*, Roxana Bugoi*, Viorel Cojocaru*, Martin Radtke**, Thomas Calligaro***, Joseph Salomon***, Laurent Pichon***, Stefan Röhrs***, Daniele Ceccato****, Ernest Oberländer-Târnoveanu*****, Corine Ionescu****** and Dana Pop******* Abstract:The recovery of the Dacian gold bracelets was the most thrilling archaeological event of the last years in Romania. The artefacts are exhibited in the Historical Treasure section of the National History Museum of Romania, Bucharest, being recovered from the international antique markets through a concerted effort of the Romanian, French, and German authorities. This paper reviews the X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyses carried out on these exquisite artefacts. These measurements followed the visual examination of qualified experts, which concluded that the gold spiralled bracelets showed strong stylistic similarities with the Dacian silver bracelets discovered until that date in archaeological contexts.Since the most likely source -for geographical and historical reasons -for the metal used to manufacture these artefacts was the Transylvanian Apuseni mountains, additional measurements on several fragments of natural Transylvanian gold, both from placers and primary deposits, were performed using Synchrotron Radiation X-ray Fluorescence (SR-XRF) at the BESSY synchrotron, Berlin, and micro Particle Induced X-ray Emission (micro-PIXE) at the AGLAE accelerator, Paris, and at the AN2000 accelerator of LNL, Padova. The conclusion of this study was that the recovered spirals are genuine Dacian artefacts, made by cold hammering, chiselling and punching Transylvanian unrefined gold -gold panned from riverbeds mixed with primary gold, most likely extracted from surface veins. Résumé : La saisie des bracelets en or de Dacie a été un des événements archéologiques les plus remarquables de ces dernières années en

Compositional studies on Transylvanian gold nuggets: Advantages and limitations of PIXE–PIGE analysis

“…Te traces were found by PIXE only in one of the samples analyzed in this paper, but similar findings are reported in [19]. Unfortunately, this element has a very low melting point (449°C), therefore, it ''disappears" during gold ore processing, and it cannot be further used for provenance issues.…”