Three thousand years of copper metallurgy—seen through the eyes of Mössbauer spectroscopy Part II: A bronze age copper process in the alpine region

Rüffler, Regina; Gonser, U.

doi:10.1007/bf02397498

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 5 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…On the other hand, the smelting redox conditions were often inferred from the assemblage of slag mineralogical phases, using as references the oxygen buffer curves (e.g., Quartz-Fayalite-Magnetite oxygen buffer) in the oxygen fugacity-temperature space [15,16]. However, because equilibrium is rarely attained, it was suggested that a reliable proxy for oxygen fugacity is the iron oxidation state in slags, which can be expressed as the ferric/ferrous ratio (Fe 3+ /Fe 2+ ) [17,18]. This redox-sensitive ratio is usually measured by Mössbauer spectroscopy, XANES spectroscopy, and redox titration (i.e., "wet chemistry") [19,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeometallurgical Characterization of Two Lombard Early Medieval Bloomery Slags from Ponte di Val Gabbia I Site (Northern Italy)

Merico

Faccoli

Corte

et al. 2023

Metals

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

An archaeometallurgical characterization of two iron smelting tap slags recovered from the early medieval site of Ponte di Val Gabbia I (Brescia, northern Italy) was performed. The main goal was to infer from the slags the working conditions of the ancient bloomery furnace in terms of temperature and oxygen chemical potential. The petrology of both slags was investigated by light optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, while their chemical compositions were measured via scanning electron microscopy coupled with X-ray dispersive spectroscopy. High-resolution Raman micro-spectrometry was used to confirm the identification of the mineralogical phases. The software Rhyolite-MELTS was used to compute the liquidus temperatures of the two slags, which were found to be 1120 °C and 1146 °C. These temperatures approximate the working temperature of the bloomery furnace. A thermodynamic-based approach was adopted to estimate the redox conditions of the reducing atmosphere of the smelting furnace, revealing that the two slags formed in different redox environments. Specifically, the resulting oxygen chemical potentials were −382.61 kJ/mol and −243.80 kJ/mol at the liquidus temperatures of 1120 °C and 1146 °C, respectively.

show abstract