Detail

After discovering the treasure in a gravel pit in the province of Alicante, researchers noticed many interesting details in some iron objects. It was stated at the time that these objects were “made of a dark lead metal, shiny in places, and often coated with a cracked iron-like oxide.”

New research showed that: The iron used in the two works comes from a meteorite that fell to Earth approximately 1 million years ago.. The scientists tested two iron objects: a C-shaped bracelet and a gold-leafed hollow sphere that may have once adorned the hilt of a sword. Both products were made between 1400 and 1200 BC.

The connection between gold and iron is important because both elements have great symbolic and social value. In this situation [артефакти] It was a hidden treasure that probably belonged not to a single individual but to an entire community. There were no kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula during this historical period.
– writes Ignacio Montero Ruiz, a researcher at the Spanish Historical Institute, one of the authors of the study.

Using mass spectrometry (a method that measures the mass/charge ratio of molecules), they measured traces of the iron-nickel alloy comparable to those found in meteoric iron.

The researchers also found that the composition of the artifacts was very similar, so “both objects may have come from the same meteorite.”

New technologies

It is still unknown who made these objects and where they came from. One version is that they came from the Eastern Mediterranean, where other modern objects are known (for example, a dagger and other objects from Tutankhamun’s tomb). “Since the chronology of other meteoric iron in Europe from Poland or Switzerland is later, we have no arguments in favor of more local production.”– says Montero Ruiz.

These are the first and oldest meteorite iron objects found in the Iberian Peninsula. Scientists say that the technology of iron production is completely different from metallurgy based on copper and precious metals (gold and silver). That’s why people who started working with meteoric iron, and later with terrestrial iron, We had to innovate and develop new technologies.

The artifacts also provide new information about Late Bronze Age metallurgical practices. The only known artifacts containing meteorite iron from the 1st millennium BC include an arrowhead dated 900 BC found in Morigen, Switzerland, and several objects from Poland dating to around 800 BC.