Some Recently Rediscovered Analyses of Chinese Bronzes from Oxford

Abstract

We report here the rediscovery of the chemical analyses of approximately 540 Chinese bronze objects, carried out in RLAHA in the late 1950s by optical emission spectrometry. Although largely of historical interest, they do in fact even now approximately double the number analyses of Chinese bronze objects that contain data on both major and minor elements. In fact, the other major equivalent data sets, from the Freer Gallery and the Sackler Collection, are of approximately the same vintage. We attempt to evaluate the quality of the data, and address a controversy that appeared in the literature during the 1960s and 1970s about the value of arsenic measurements in Chinese bronzes as an indicator of authenticity.

Global circulation of silver between Ming–Qing China and the Americas: Combining historical texts and scientific analyses

“…It also allows us to compensate for the different number of data points in each distribution when calculating the critical value for each test. For the detailed analytical process, see Pollard et al (2018bPollard et al ( , 2019. A Mann-Whitney U-test was also carried out and showed the same results as CFA (see Material II in the additional supporting information).…”

Rare colour in medieval China: Case study of yellow pigments on tomb mural paintings at Xi'an, the capital of the Chinese Tang dynasty

“…Our hypothesis is that exploration of vanadinite could be associated with the long history of using lead in China. While copper metallurgy moved into central China from steppe, since the beginning of the Bronze Age Chinese craftsmen already knew to add lead to copper and modify the final alloying products (R. Liu et al, 2015Liu et al, , 2020Pollard et al, 2017Pollard et al, , 2018Pollard et al, , 2019, as exemplified by the case of Erlitou (R. Liu, 2016) but more evident in Erligang (R. Liu et al, 2019) and Anyang. More importantly, the use of lead appears to cross a range of different industries from leaded-barium glass to leaded glaze, both of which were invented by China (Henderson et al, 2018).…”

Beyond Provenance

“…However, several studies, including our own, have shown that pXRF on unprepared metal surfaces can give grossly misleading results-especially if the surfaces are visibly corroded. analysed by pXRF 193 metal objects from the Bronze and early Iron Age of the eastern Eurasian steppe in the British Museum, of which 75 had previously been analysed by OES in the late 1950s (Pollard et al 2018). Due to conservation considerations, in the pXRF work only surface analysis was permitted, without the removal of any corrosion, although flat surfaces revealing apparently clean metal were selected for analysis whenever possible.…”

“…As might also be expected, however, data produced by older methods of analysis, especially optical emission spectroscopy (OES), show a pattern that is somewhat more difficult to interpret. Figure 5 shows the variation in copper group ubiquities for a heterogeneous assemblage of 250 Chinese bronzes from the British Museum, analysed by OES in Oxford in the late 1950s but only published in 2018 (Pollard et al 2018). In this instance the cut-off variation has been extended to 0.45.…”