Gold from Troy, Poliochni and Ur found to have the same origin
The gold in objects from Troy, Poliochni (a settlement on the island of Lemnos which lies roughly 60 kilometers away from Troy), and Ur in Mesopotamia have the same geographic origin and were traded over great distances.
This discovery has been made by an international team of researchers using an innovative mobile laser method to analyze samples of the famous Early Bronze Age jewelry from Troy and Poliochni. The results have been published in Journal of Archaeological Science.
The study was initiated by Ernst Pernicka, scientific director of the Curt-Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry (CEZA) at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim and director of the University of Tübingen's Troy project, and Barbara Horejs, director of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Their international team brought together scientists and archaeologists from the Curt-Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry, the Austrian Archaeological Institute in Vienna and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Ever since Heinrich Schliemann discovered Priam's Treasure in Troy in 1873, the origin of the gold has been a mystery.
Professor Pernicka and the international team has now been able to prove that it derived from what are known as secondary deposits such as rivers and its chemical composition is not only identical with that of gold objects from the settlement of Poliochni on Lemnos and from the royal tombs in Ur in Mesopotamia, but also with that of objects from Georgia. "This means there must have been trade links between these far-flung regions," says Pernicka.
Hair ornaments (top left), a pin (bottom left), necklaces (center) and a torque (bottom right) were among the total 26 gold objects from Poliochni on Lemnos that have been studied by the international team of researchers. Credit: Christoph Schwall / Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) Vienna
The hole melted in the surface of the gold item with the beam from the portable laser ablation system measures just 120 micro-meters in diameter and is conical in form. The damage to the gold object can only be discerned using an electron microscope. Credit: Universitaet Tübingen
Necklaces (top left), earrings (top right) and brooches (bottom) were among the total 61 gold objects from Troy that have been studied by the international team of researchers. Credit: J. Huber, Ch. Schwall (ÖAI Wien) and Born et al. 2009