the center. The purpose was, as it seams possible, to find whether the bells were welded to the barrel or the object was cast in one piece by the lost wax process. First, microscopic examination was performed at low magnification, with a binocular stereoscopic microscope at 10 to 40 X. A X-ray shadowgraph was taken in order to see if there were different metals or alloys, particularly at the union between the bells and the ring. Besides that, a SEM and EDS was applied at the same place and a metallograph was also taken, using a replica method. The result shows that there is no evidence of welding; the radiography does not show metals of different X-ray density. EDS shows no significant changes in the elemental chemical composition along the joint. Also, the metallograph shows dendritic structure, characteristic of the cast metals, indicating that the object was cast probably by the lost wax process. A theory of the way the object was cast is proposed. KEYWORDS: Copper, alloys, metallurgy, lost wax.

THE SOURCES OF, AND TRADE IN, TIN IN THE BRONZE AGE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD: THE POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTION OF TIN ISOTOPES (26)

Gale, N. H. Isotrace Laboratory University of Oxford, UK

One of the more important unsolved problems of Bronze Age Mediterranean archaeology is the elucidation of the sources of tin for the prehistoric world, which began to appear as bronze in the Royal Cemeteries of Ur and in such Anatolian sites as Troy, and later spread throughout the Mediterranean world. Although early 2nd millennium BC, texts from Assyrian trading colonies in Anatolia and from Mari on the Euphrates record an important caravan trade in tin, they do not reveal the source of the tin, though it seems to have come from east of these sites. It is remarkable that, after twenty years of intensive scholarly investigation and fieldwork, we still have no hard evidence regarding the sources of tin. The Isotrace Laboratory has been exploring the use of: (a) comparative lead isotope analyses of the traces of lead in tin ores and in tin objects; (b) tin isotope analyses of tin ores, tin metal objects and of the tin separated by chemical means from prehistoric bronze objects. Here we report initial tin isotopic analyses of cassiterite ores and of ancient tin ingots using the relatively new method of ICPMS with magnetic sector and simultaneous multicollection. Earlier data suggesting that the isotopic composition of tin is invariate in nature is shown to be incorrect, and the possibility that tin may be provenanced using variations in the isotopic composition of tin will be examined. KEYWORDS: provenancing, tin, tin isotopes.

THE EXAMINATION OF THE GOLD SAMPLES FROM SARDIS THE REPLICATION EXPERIMENTS (27)

Geckinli,A.E. Meeks, N. D. MX0000173 Istanbul Teknik Universitesi, Turkey Craddock, P. T. Ozbal, H. Department of Scientific Research Bogazi?i Universitesi, Turkey The British Museum, UK Sardis was the capital of the Lydian kingdom that ended with the reign of King Croesus, who ruled from 562 to 547 BC. His legendary wealth was from the gold found in the placer deposits of the alluvial from the Pactolus stream that flows through Sardis from mount Tmolus. The first gold and electrum coinage is attributed to the Lydians. The excavations began at Sardis in 1958 and continue under the Harvard-Cornell expedition, but the first archaeological evidence for the purification of gold was discovered in 1968 in the area designated as Pactolus North. The excavators found and recorded the parting furnace and cupellation hollows associated with gold refining and silver recovery. The furnace brick are found to be impregnated with considerable amounts of silver absorbed from the purification process. In addition to various refractory remains gold foil fragments, globules, cut lump, square sided tuyers and litharge cakes which physically fit cupellation hollows ware also found in this area. In this work the scientific examination of the 36 tiny selected samples by the excavators were received from the Manisa Archaeological Museum and were studied by means of SEM and Energy Dispersive X-ray Microanalysis (EDX). Of those 26 were in the form of foil fragments, 3 were lump pieces, 5 were in the form of minute globes and 2 were gold dust. The gold remains studied came from the 1968 excavation season and with the exception of the gold dust. The samples of gold dust were panned from the bed of the Pactolus stream by mineralogist during the survey and are kept at the Manisa Archaeological Museum. The microanalysis results indicated that the silver content of the samples were between 0-35%. Copper content of the samples are about the same and not exceeding 2%. According to the results, half of the gold foils are pure and the others are having silver composition in the range of 1.1 to 22.8%. The surface as well as the bulk of the gold foils show either extensive or fine porosity presumably as a result of parting process. The amount of porosity seems to be related to silver content of the sample. In all the samples neither surface enrichment nor platinum group elements were detected. The preliminary results of the examination of gold treated in a series of refining replication experiments were also discussed. The results of this work have an important bearing on the interpretation of the structure observed in the Sardis gold samples. KEYWORDS: Metals, Sardis, Energy Dispersive X-ray Microanalysis.

SEARCHING FOR THE PROVENANCE OF GOLD. THE METHODOLOGY OF GOLD ANALYSIS BY ICP-MS (29)

Gondonneau, A. Cowell, M. Guerra, M. F. The British Museum CNRS, Centre Ernest-Babelon/IRAMAT, Department of Scientific Research, UK France

The problems posed by ancient metalwork often concern two major questions: the manufacturing technology of the objects and the source of the raw materials. If, for the first question, a coupling of both analytical and metallurgical data is in general ne- cessary to understand the different processes, for the second question analytical data, especially trace elements in precious metals, may be enough to tackle a certain number of cases. «The problems posed by ancient metalwork often concern two major questions: the manufacturing technology of the objects and the source of the raw materials. If, for the first question, a coupling of both analytical and metallurgical