Discovering the Secrets of Meteoritic Iron in Iberian Bronze Age Treasures
Amidst a cache of glittering golden treasures from the Iberian Bronze Age, a pair of corroded objects might be the most precious of all.
A dull bracelet and a rusted hollow hemisphere decorated with gold are forged, researchers have found, not out of metal from beneath the ground, but with iron from meteorites that fell from the sky.
The discovery, led by now-retired head of conservation at the National Archeological Museum Spain, Salvador Rovira-Llorens, was revealed in a paper last year, suggesting that metalworking technology and techniques in Iberia more than 3,000 years ago were far more advanced than previously thought.
The Treasure of Villena, a collection of 66 mostly gold objects, was discovered over 60 years ago in 1963 in what is now Alicante, Spain. It has since been regarded as one of the most important examples of Bronze Age goldsmithing in the Iberian Peninsula and Europe as a whole.
However, determining the age of the collection has been somewhat challenging due to two objects: a small, hollow hemisphere thought to be part of a scepter or sword hilt, and a single, torc-like bracelet. Both have a “ferrous” appearance, resembling iron.
The Iron Age in the Iberian Peninsula, where smelted terrestrial iron replaced bronze, didn’t begin until around 850 BCE. The gold materials in the Treasure of Villena have been dated to between 1500 and 1200 BCE, creating a puzzle around the ferrous artifacts.
However, iron ore from Earth’s crust is not the only source of malleable iron. Pre-Iron Age iron artifacts around the world were forged from meteorites, distinguished by their higher nickel content. Researchers tested the two artifacts from the Treasure of Villena to determine their nickel composition.
Despite significant corrosion, the results strongly suggest that both the hemisphere and bracelet were made from meteoritic iron, dating back to around 1400-1200 BCE.
“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,” the researchers explain in their paper, “which is compatible with a Late Bronze chronology, prior to the beginning of the widespread production of terrestrial iron.”
Further non-invasive techniques could provide more detailed data to solidify these findings. The study was published in Trabajos de Prehistoria.
An earlier version of this article was published in February 2024.
