First attempt to obtain the bulk composition of ancient silver–copper coins by using XRF and GRT

Abstract

Archeological silver–copper pieces often show surface enrichments in silver, either intentional or fortuitous. When this happens, non-destructive techniques like PIXE (Proton Induced X-ray Emission) and XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence) are not sufficient to access the whole bulk pieces because their penetration depths are typically of a few tens microns. If the archeological pieces cannot be cut or polished, it is necessary to apply other non-destructive techniques to access the bulk pieces. That way, archeological bronze pieces have been successfully studied combining XRF (or PIXE) with GRT (Gamma-Ray Transmission).In this work, the bulk composition of five silver Roman coins have been indirectly measured by combining XRF and GRT. These results were compared with previous works made by our group using the same coins by direct means of PIXE and XRF, so the accuracy of this indirect method could be tested.