Lead isotope studies - Sardinia and the Mediterranean: Provenance studies of artefacts found in Sardinia

It has been a principal aim of research at the Isotrace Laboratory in Oxford to establish Bronze Age trading patterns in the Mediterranean, especially for metals. The metals copper and tin, together with silver, lead and gold, were the metals which constituted the ‘trade’ in metals in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean. Archaeology per se had failed to establish these trading patterns, as had scientific methods using chemical analyses. However it was established by the Isotrace Laboratory in 1982 that comparative lead isotope analyses of metal ores and artefacts could be extended from the study of lead and silver to provide a method to establish trading patterns for copper. A principal form in which copper was traded around the Mediterranean region in the period roughly between 1600 BC and 1100 BC was in the form of the so called copper oxhide ingots, weighing on average about 30 kilograms. The present paper proves that the large number of copper oxhide ingots found on Sardinia were not made of copper from Sardinian ore deposits, as surmised by some archaeologists, but were instead made from copper from the Apliki mining region deposits in Cyprus, in common with all other analysed copper oxhide ingots from around the LBA Mediterranean, including the ingots excavated from the LBA shipwreck of Cape Gelidonya. It is also proved that copper alloy artefacts excavated from nuragic contexts on Sardinia are consistent with having been made of copper from Sardinian ore deposits.Citation: Gale, N. H. (2006). 'Lead isotope studies - Sardinia and the Mediterranean - Provenance studies of artefacts found in Sardinia', Instrumentum 23, 29-34