Abstract
Silver-bearing lead ores at Laurion in Attica were considered to have been first exploited with the introduction of coinage sometime around the birth of Classical Greece. However, in the late 20th century this chronology was radically revised earlier, to the Bronze Age, largely supported by lead isotope analyses (LIA). Here, we acknowledge that lead and silver metallurgy emerged from the earliest times but we propose that any correlation between these metals in the archaeological record is not a consequence of a geological association between lead and silver in ores such as galena until the middle of the first millennium BCE. We suggest that ancient metallurgists recognised that silver minerals (such as horn silver) dispersed in host rocks could be concentrated in molten lead and that LIA signatures of Bronze Age silver artefacts reflect the use of exogenous lead to extract silver, perhaps applying processes similar to those used to acquire silver in Bronze Age Siphnos. We further propose that lead from Laurion used for silver extraction resulted in the inadvertent transfer of its LIA signature (probably aided by roving silver prospectors) to silver objects and metallurgical debris recovered around the Aegean. New compositional analyses for the Mycenaean shaft-grave silver (c. 1600 BCE) support these conclusions. We believe that reverting to the mid-first millennium BCE for the first exploitation of silver from argentiferous lead ores is consistent with the absence of archaeological evidence for centralised control over Laurion until the Archaic period, the paucity of lead slag associated with silver-processing debris at Bronze Age sites, the scarcity of silver artefacts recovered in post-shaft grave contexts at Mycenae and throughout the Early Iron Age Aegean, the few Attic silver coins with LIA signatures consistent with Laurion until after 500 BCE and a single unambiguous mention of silver in the Linear B texts.
Highlights
Silver stag rhyton (SG388) from Mycenae in the National Museum of Athens (NMA388)
Lead artefacts and debris associated with smelting lead ores are found in Bronze Age contexts in the Near East (e.g. Yener et al 1991; Hess et al 1998; Pernicka et al 1998; Hauptmann et al 2002; Efe and Fidan 2006) and around the Aegean (e.g. Gale and Stos-Gale 1981a)
Since the lead isotope analyses (LIA) signature of the silver source would be affected by the addition of Laurion lead, the silver may have derived from Laurion and/or elsewhere, as evidenced by silver with higher crustal ages in Figure and Figure as well as litharge and silver with LIA signatures consistent with Laurion which have been found on Kea, Crete and other islands
Summary
Meyers (2003, 271-88) developed a model to describe the trajectory of ore use for silver in antiquity, based primarily on the empirical observation that gold levels are generally much lower in galena (PbS) than in cerussite (PbCO3) (i.e. silver objects analysed with gold contents greater than 0.1 weight per cent of gold (0.1wt%Au) were considered to come from cerussite rather than galena) and that silver with low gold and low lead levels derived from dry silver ores (such as cerargyrite, AgCl – a dry silver ore known as horn silver). We believe that the common view that argentiferous lead ores, such as those at Laurion, were exploited from the Bronze Age may have arisen from an assumption that silver and lead metallurgy appear correlated archaeologically and must, have been introduced together (e.g. see Forbes 1950, 173; Gale and Stos-Gale 1981b; Pernicka et al 1998) This view probably arose from the fact that during the fourth millennium BCE silver appeared quite suddenly over a wide area, including Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia and the Levant, along with evidence for cupellation in the form of litharge and other production remains This, in turn, has influenced current interpretations of the circulation of metals in Bronze and Iron Age Aegean archaeology
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call