Natural Science in Archaeology

7.2 Gold (Au) 151
Fig. 7.3 Gold mask from
Bronze Age Mycenae, Greece
Fleece (Fig. 7.3). The Romans exploited the gold deposits of Galicia (Bodega
Barahona 1991), but, when Rome fell, the recovery of gold from these deposits
declined rapidly.
In the New World, the use of gold came much later but reached great volumes
and great artistic heights south of the Rio Grande River, in Central America, and
northern South America. Indeed, stories of the abundance of gold objects were
the driving force behind the Spanish conquest. Since the sixteenth century CE,
northwestern South America (largely Colombia) has been a major source of gold.
Precontact inhabitants had a wealth of gold objects as jewelry, religious objects,
and tools (Von Hagen 1977). This led the early European explorers in a search for
“El Dorado”. The Sican culture, a pre-Inca society that existed in northern Peru
during the period 700–1400 CE, produced a wide variety of gold alloy ceremonial
objects such as masks and knives (Shimada and Griffin 1994). The first metalworking
in the Andes may have been practiced by early settlers in the Lake Titicaca basin
(Peru) nearly 4000 years BP. These craftsmen fashioned objects from hammered
native gold (Aldenderfer et al. 2008).
Placer gold was apparently available throughout much of ancient China but seems
to have received little attention until the Late Shang Period. It was used to add color
to other materials such as bronze. Although gold had been worked in China during
the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1700–1100 BCE), it played only a minor role until the ensuing
Zhou Dynasty. By 23 CE in the Han Dynasty, the Imperial treasury contained
over 6.3 million oz. of gold (Louis 1994), which would be the rough equivalent
of the amount held by the Roman Empire at the same time. Thus, Marco Polo’s