Silver, Copper, and Bronze in Early Dynastic Ur, Mesopotamia. A High-Resolution Analysis Approach

The excavations of the Royal Tombs of Ur by Leonard Woolley in the 1920s to 30s provided a great wealth of precious metal artefacts, which must have travelled a long way due to their location in the metal-poor alluvial plains of the Euphrates. Where did you come from? Ur had a strategically important position on the shores of the Persian Gulf in the Early Bronze Age connecting to a long-distance trade network. The University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology provided a collection of silver, copper, and bronze samples for provenance studies. They were analysed using state-of-the-art scientific methods. The results gave interesting information about the silver and copper sources. In addition, detailed methodological evaluation of the in situ analysis could be achieved, as well as a large-scale compilation of the old mining regions in the Near and Middle East, which was compiled by means of GIS applications.