X-ray Fluorescence analytical criteria to assess the fineness of ancient silver coins: Application on Ptolemaic coinage

Application of PIXE Spectrometry in Determination of Chemical Composition in Ilkhanid Silver Coins

“…Variations in the Cu amounts in the silver coins of the Ilkhanid kings (Hulako Khan, Ghazan Khan and Arghun Khan) reveal that their reign was faced with an eco-political problem and that Cu was deliberately added to silver, not only for hardening purposes but also for economic reasons (Tripathy 2010 The presence of Ca in the cleaned silver coins is due to the fact that its removal was impossible at that time during the metallurgical process. Furthermore, the presence of Fe may be attributed to surface contaminations (Kantarelou 2011;Flament 2004). The results indicate a strong negative correlation between Ag and Cu, the more the Ag content, the less will be that of Cu.…”

Metallurgical investigation on fourth century BCE silver jewellery of two hoards from Samaria

“…EDS is a surface technique; therefore, surface measurements of ancient silver objects may not provide reliable information of the bulk composition, due to tarnish layers, corrosion, oxide layers, conservation treatments, cleaning residues, and silver enrichment of the surface1618192021365354. Therefore, in order to achieve an optimal (relatively quantitative) SEM-EDS chemical analysis that will represent the bulk of the object, it is essential to understand the limitations of the EDS measurements.…”

Trace element signatures in larval soft tissues reveal transport, but not population connectivity

“…The creation and use of proportional scores is novel for the field of ecology (but see but is well established in many other fields of science, including chemistry (Aruga 1998, Fushimi et al 2011, archaeology (Aruga et al 1999, Kantarelou et al 2011), environmental engineering (McKenzie et al 2009), food and health sciences (Chiarenzelli & Pominville 2008, Korhonova et al 2009), and geology (Wu et al 1990). These studies and others like them have successfully used proportional scores to create trace element signatures when the mass of material was unknown, and then used those signatures to classify samples into groups as we do here.…”