Strange alien metal from beyond planet Earth found in ancient treasure stash – The Mirror US
A pair of 3,000-year-old objects amid a hoard of treasure were found to be crafted from extra-terrestrial iron.
The two rustier items from a treasure trove from the Iberian Bronze Age, a bracelet and a rusted hollow hemisphere decorated with gold, were found to have been crafted from meteorites that fell from the sky.
According to a paper published in the Archeological Museum Spain by the now retired head of conservation, Salvador Rovira-Llorens, the discovery shows that metalworking technology and techniques in ancient Iberia were far more advanced than initially thought.
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The Treasure of Villena, made up of 66 mostly gold objects was discovered more than 60 years ago in 1963 in Alicante, Spain, and has since come to be regarded as one of the most important examples of Bronze Age goldsmithing in the Iberian Peninsula, and wider Europe.
Determining the age of the two objects has proved difficult, but both have what archaeologists have described as a "ferrous" appearance, meaning they seem to be made of iron.
The objects made of iron from out of this world are a small, hollow hemisphere, thought to be part of a scepter or sword hill, and a single, torc-like bracelet. In the Iberian Peninsula, smelted terrestrial iron began to replace bronze in the Iron Age at around 850 BCE.
However, gold materials have been dated to between 1500 and 1200 BCE. So working out where the ferrous-looking artifacts sit in the context of the Treasure of Villena has been something of a puzzle.
However, iron ore from Earth's crust is not the only source of malleable iron. There are a number of pre-Iron Age iron artifacts around the world that were forged from meteorites. Most famous is the meteoritic iron dagger of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, amongst other Bronze Age weapons made of the material, which were and still are highly valuable and prized possessions.
The way to differentiate between alien iron and earthly iron is by nickel content. Iron from meteorites has a much higher nickel content than Earth’s iron. So the Municipal Archaeological Museum of Villena carefully tested the two artifacts to determine just how much nickel they contained.
The material was subjected to mass spectrometry to determine its composition. In spite of the high degree of corrosion, which alters the elemental makeup of the artifact, the results strongly suggest that both the hemisphere and the bracelet were made from meteoritic iron. This showed the objects were made around the same period, dating back to around 1400 to 1200 BCE.
The researchers said: "The available data suggest that the cap and bracelet from the Treasure of Villena would currently be the first two pieces attributable to meteoritic iron in the Iberian Peninsula, which is compatible with a Late Bronze chronology, prior to the beginning of the widespread production of terrestrial iron."
Because the objects are severely eroded, the results aren't conclusive. However, there are more recent, non-invasive techniques that could be applied to the objects to obtain a more detailed set of data that would help cement the findings, the team suggested. The findings were published in Trabajos de Prehistoria.
