
These alloys have a great range of content, some as high as 80 gold, which is. The study of these objects can help to follow the trade of metals in the Phoenician-colonial period. In powerful ways this is the origin story of every piece of gold jewelry.

Lydian jewelry includes various diadems, necklaces, earrings, brooches. Few analytical data of this particular kind of alloy are reported in the bibliography. Since gold, electrum (an alloy of gold and silver), and silver are easily shaped. We have found an unusual composition characterized by around 50 wt.% gold, 50 wt.% silver and some copper, which can be identified as ELECTRUM. As a bulk trade good, it was worth 25 gp per. A standard electrum coin was approximately 30.6 mm in diameter and weighed approximately 9 grams apiece (or 50 to one pound). For this work we have again employed PIXE spectrometry with 2.2 MeV protons from the 3 MV Pelletron accelerator at the CNA to characterize the metallic alloys and the manufacturing techniques. Electrum was a naturally occurring silver-gold alloy with half the value of pure gold: 1 electrum piece (ep) was worth 50 copper pieces (cp), 5 silver pieces (sp), 1/2 of a gold piece (gp), or 1/20 of a platinum piece (pp). Absolutely non destructive analysis was performed. Part of this production has already been analyzed by the authors, finding compositional differences and identifying soldering procedures, thanks to the use of the external microbeam.

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A set of ancient gold jewellery was found in Cádiz (formerly Gadir, south Spain) in tombs dated in Phoenician-Archaic period (VII-VI century BC), and nowadays is exhibited in the local Museum.
