Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie, Mannheim, Germany.
Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.
PLoS One. 2020 Mar 18;15(3):e0229623. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0229623. eCollection 2020.
The innovation of iron production is often considered one of the greatest technological advances in human history. A reliable provenancing method for iron is instrumental for the reconstruction of economic, social and geo-political aspects of iron production and use in antiquity. Although the potential of osmium isotopes analysis for this purpose has been previously suggested, here we present for the first time the results of osmium isotope analysis of ores, bloom and metal obtained from a set of systematic, bloomery iron-smelting experiments, utilizing selected ores from the Southern Levant. The results show that the 187Os/188Os ratio is preserved from ore to metal, with no isotopic fractionation. In addition, enrichment/depletion of osmium content was observed in the transition from ore to metal and from ore to slag. This observation has potential significance for our ability to differentiate between the various processes and sheds light on the suitability of various production remains for this method, which emerges as a robust and promising tool for the provenancing of archaeological ferrous metals.
铁器生产的创新通常被认为是人类历史上最伟大的技术进步之一。对于铁器生产和使用的古代经济、社会和地缘政治方面的重建，一种可靠的铁器产地溯源方法是至关重要的。尽管先前已经有人提出利用锇同位素分析的潜力，但在这里，我们首次介绍了利用选自南黎凡特的矿石进行一系列系统的、竖炉炼铁实验所获得的矿石、铁块和金属的锇同位素分析结果。结果表明，187Os/188Os 比值从矿石到金属得以保留，没有同位素分馏。此外，在从矿石到金属以及从矿石到炉渣的转变过程中，锇的含量出现了富集/亏损。这一观察结果对于我们区分各种工艺的能力具有潜在意义，并揭示了各种生产残留物对于这种方法的适宜性，这种方法已经成为考古铁器产地溯源的一种强大而有前途的工具。
