Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c26.s1: Brass Before the Discovery of Zinc
Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v1.c26.s1
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Brass Before the Discovery of Zinc
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The earliest artefacts noted so far containing zinc is from India. Lothal (2200-1500 BC) showed one highly oxidized antiquity (No. 4189) which assayed: 70.7 per cent copper 6.04 zinc, 0.9 Fe, 6.04 acid-soluble component (probably carbonate, a product of atmospheric corrosion). The material could have been prepared through smelting of zinc-bearing copper ore or the cementation route described earlier. The raw materials might have come from the Ahar-Zawar area.
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Similar materials might have been used for making the brass-bronze items of Atrañjikhera during the PGW era (1200-600 BC). One copper item contained 11.68 per cent Sn, 9.0 Pb and 6.28 Zn; another item assayed 20.72 Sn and 16.20 Zn. Both the samples contained traces of iron and sulphur, indicating the possibility of chalcopyrite and sphalerite-galena having been the source materials which could easily come from the Ahar-Zawar area.
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We have discussed the above-mentioned zinc-containing artefacts in chapters 6 and 11. The author of this monograph was the first scholar to draw attention to the brass item of Lothal and Atrañjikhera and their possible link with the 1136 ± 160 BC. C-14 date of the timber samples in the Rajpura-Dariba silver-lead-zinc mine near Udaipur. (Biswas, 1990: 53-54)
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Craddock (1978) and Craddock et al. (1980) surveyed the evidences of early brass artefacts in the West. The earliest brass artefacts known come from the excavations at the Gordion Tomb in Phrygia, dating from the eighth and seventh century BC onwards. These came after the Lothal and Atrañjikhera traditions. From the seventh century BC the Greeks commented upon brass or oreichalkos, but always as an expensive, exotic metal not produced in Greece. There was no zinc in the early Greek bronzes. Etruscan bronze of the fifth century BC contained 11 per cent zinc.