Nuragic Working Tools Characterization with Corrosion Layer Determinations

From the availability of metals to the technology and tools needed to transform them, roughly every civilization in the Mediterranean basin has a metalsmith story. Many of the objects produced by them share a few peculiar characteristics, usages, or even shapes. In this scenario, a class of objects...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Marta Porcaro, Anna Depalmas, Sergio Lins, Claudio Bulla, Matteo Pischedda, Antonio Brunetti
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022-05-01
Series:Materials
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/15/11/3879
Description
Summary:From the availability of metals to the technology and tools needed to transform them, roughly every civilization in the Mediterranean basin has a metalsmith story. Many of the objects produced by them share a few peculiar characteristics, usages, or even shapes. In this scenario, a class of objects that can be clustered by their usage, i.e., working tools, stands out from the crowd. For this study, a set of working tools from the Nuragic civilization (Sardinia, Italy) was researched with a non-destructive technique: X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). A quantification of the chemical species present in their alloy was obtained with the use of Monte Carlo simulations. The XRMC package, used for the simulations, managed for the first time to reproduce very complex corrosion layers and to thoroughly characterize them from a chemical perspective. The obtained results were discussed and compared to other results reported in the literature.
ISSN:1996-1944