The sanctuary of Hercules in Sesklo Region, Volos, Greece: an archaeometric approach of the archaic bronze objects

Abstract

The study of the bronze offerings obtained from the Sanctuary of Hercules in the area of Sesklo, Municipality of Volos, Thessaly, Greece is presented in this paper. The objects were examined initially with non-destructive followed with invasive methods in order to better understand their manufacture technology. The provenance of copper is also briefly discussed.ARTICLE HISTORY

Handheld methods in archaeological research on large copper alloy assemblages: HH‐XRF against HH‐LIBS

“…Stamelou et al . (2017) give 5–7% on Archaic Greek objects by metallography, 4–11% by XRF; Orfanou and Rehren (2015) give a mean of 7.5% on Archaic Greek bronzes analysed by Electron Probe Microanalysis (EPMA). Exceptionally high tin where found added to ornamental/special objects in any of these cases is in the teens; more rarely close to 20%.…”

“…In the methods study discussed here, we aimed to establish whether another HH technique could equal or surpass the usefulness of HH‐XRF in research such as this, which aims primarily at large‐scale intra‐assemblage alloy characterization in museum settings usually lacking consistently accessible laboratory or benchtop instruments (the most commonly used XRF for archaeological projects in Greece has been a customized portable benchtop from Demokritos Laboratory of the University of Athens; Karydas 2007; Orfanou and Rehren 2015; Stamelou et al . 2017; cf. the customised devices used in Italy and Greece by Giumlia‐Mair et al .…”

“…(2012) and Stamelou et al . (2017) used XRF on abrasion‐cleaned reference samples, without the separate identification of corrosion layers, to demonstrate surface tin enrichment of up to three times on uncleaned corroded bronzes. Even so, they noted that some readings on uncleaned surfaces were actually lower than, or the same as, readings on ‘cleaned’ metal in the same object (the latter case potentially due to intergranular corrosion on the ‘cleaned’ surface, as in Orfanou and Rehren's 2015 EPMA and XRF studies).…”

“…For example, regarding the exposure of the ‘original’ metal surface for testing, there was corrosion removal on the reference samples or choice of ‘small corrosion free areas’ for testing by Charalambous (2016) and Stamelou et al . (2017); selection of only uncorroded artefacts and supplementation with destructive atomic absorption spectrometry (AAS) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on selected samples by Giumlia‐Mair et al . (2010); use of drill cleaning on all sampled objects by Bietti Sestieri et al .…”