The provenance of a forgotten Copper Age spectacle spiral pendant
Zsuzsanna Siklósi
Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, 4/B Múzeum Krt., Budapest, 1088 Hungary; MTA-ELTE Lendület „Momentum” Innovation Research Group; E-mail: siklosi.zsuzsanna@btk.elte.hu, ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6451-5578
Igor M. Villa
Institute of Geology, University of Bern; Centro Universitario Datazioni e Archeometria, Università di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy; ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8070-8142
Stefano Nisi
Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, L’Aquila, Italy; ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3486-6091
Cite as: Siklósi, Zs., Villa, I. M., & Nisi, S. (2023). The provenance of a forgotten Copper Age spectacle spiral pendant. In A. Király (Ed.), From tea leaves to leaf-shaped tools. Studies in honour of Zsolt Mester on his sixtieth birthday (pp. 297–311). Lithic Research Roundtable & Institute of Archaeological Sciences, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. https://doi.org/10.23898/litikumsi02a14
Abstract: A spectacle spiral pendant, which has been known since the 1950s is kept in the Ferenc Kubinyi Museum in Szécsény. It was partially forgotten in the archaeological literature, or in other cases, it was duplicated. We discuss the possible provenance of its raw material and the place of its manufacturing based on the examination of the lead isotope ratios and chemical composition of the artefact.
According to the results, both could have been in the northwestern Carpathians, which falls within the distribution area of this pendant type. The exploitation of raw materials, the steps of manufacturing and the meaning of these artefacts represent local traditions and innovations, thus a completely independent metallurgical centre.
Keywords: Copper Age, Ludanice culture, Spectacle spiral pendant, Copper provenancing, Lead isotope analysis, Chemical compositional analysis
We are grateful to the Hungarian National Museum, Ferenc Kubinyi Museum, Szécsény, and especially to Szilvia Guba for the opportunity to examine the Balassagyarmat pendant. We thank Balázs Lencz, the restorer of the Hungarian National Museum, for sampling. We are grateful to Zsuzsa Hegedűs for her help in identifying the Domaneşti pendant and to Viktória Mozgai for measuring the weight of the sample.
Data availability statement: The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.
Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding statement: The project is financed from the NRDI Fund (NKFI FK 124260, ’The spread of the products and technology of metallurgy in the Carpathian Basin between 5000 and 3000 BC’ PI: Zsuzsanna Siklósi) by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office. The chemical compositional analysis was financed by the IPERION HS (TRENCH project).
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International Public License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and transform the material, under the following terms: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
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