A pair of corroded objects may be the most valuable among the collection’s collection of glittering golden treasures from the Iberian Bronze Age.

Researchers discovered that the dull bracelet and the rusted hollow hemisphere decorated with gold were forged not from metal from underground, but from iron from a meteorite that fell from the sky.

The discovery was led by Salvador Rovira-Llorens, now retired head of preservation at Spain’s National Archaeological Museum, and was revealed in a document published. paper In 2024, research suggests that metalworking techniques and technology on the Iberian Peninsula more than 3,000 years ago were far more advanced than we thought.

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Treasure of Villena, as a hidden place 66 mostly gold objects It was discovered over 60 years ago in 1963 in what is now Alicante, Spain, and has since come to be regarded as one of the most important examples of Bronze Age goldsmithing on the Iberian Peninsula and in the whole of Europe.

Watch the video below for an overview.

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Determining the age of the collection was somewhat difficult due to two objects. One is a small hollow hemisphere, thought to be part of the hilt of a scepter or sword. And there’s one Torque-like bracelet.

Both have been described by archaeologists as having an “iron-like” appearance, meaning they appear to be made of iron.

The Iron Age, when smelted bare iron began to replace bronze in the Iberian Peninsula, did not begin until about 850 BC.

The problem is that the gold material has been dated between 1500 and 1200 BC. So it was something of a puzzle to figure out where the iron-looking artifacts fit in the context of Villena’s treasure.

However, iron ore from the Earth’s crust is not the only source of malleable iron. Around the world, there are many pre-Iron Age iron artifacts forged from blocks of meteorite.

Perhaps the most famous is King Tutankhamun’s meteorite iron daggerbut there is Other Bronze Age Weapons It is made of that material, they were highly valued.

There are ways to tell the difference. Iron from meteorites has a much higher nickel content than iron dug up from the earth’s ground.

So, with permission from the Archaeological Museum of Villena, which houses the collection, the researchers carefully examined the two artifacts to find out how much nickel they contained.

They carefully took samples of both artifacts and performed mass spectrometry to determine their composition.

Despite the high degree of corrosion that changes the artifact’s elemental composition, the results strongly suggest that both the hemisphere and the bracelet were made of meteoric iron.

This neatly resolves the dilemma of how the two artifacts fit in with the rest of the collection. This means that they date from around 1400 to 1200 BC and were created around the same time.

“Available data suggests that the hat and bracelet from the Villena treasure are the first two items to be attributed to the Iberian peninsula meteorite at this time.” The researchers explain in their paper“This is compatible with the Late Bronze Chronology, before the beginning of widespread production of iron on land.”

The results are inconclusive as the object is currently severely corroded. However, the researchers suggest that there are more recent, non-invasive techniques that can be applied to objects to obtain more detailed data sets that can help solidify their findings.

The survey results are prehistoric trabajos.

A previous version of this article was published in February 2024.