The Composition of Metal Artifacts: a Guide to Provenance?

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Abstract
This is probably the question most often asked of the metallurgist by the archaeologiist, and the object of this report is to show how far we have got in our attempts to answer it. First, it must be clearly understood that we can only expect some correlation between ore and weapon or utensil, and therefore provenance in the early eras of metallurgy, where the bulk of the metal used emanated from primary sources, and where the amount of secondary re-used metal was negligible. This objection does not apply, however, in the case of semifinished products such as those ingots which have been made from ores and not from secondary material. This should include the plano-convex copper ingots of Late Hronze and Roman date in Britain and the ox-hide ingots of the Eastern Mediterranean.