New insights on the interpretation of alum-based fake silver recipes from 3rd century CE by an experimental archaeology approach in the laboratory

Abstract

Experimental archaeology was first theorised by Ascher in 1961 and then by Coles in 1973: it represents an important research methodology for the study of ancient technologies and societies. Since the 1990′s of the last century, the new concept of ‘experimental archaeometry’ appears in the wider field of archaeological science. Following this approach, two alchemical recipes from a 3rd century CE papyrus were reproduced in the laboratory. In this paper, a link between archaeometry and experimental archaeology is established, and a re-interpretation of the original recipes is proposed.