PIXE and XRF analyses of copper artifacts from the Gumelniţa area (Romania)

Abstract

The main aim of this research is to expand the knowledge of the early stages of copper metallurgy in the Chalcolithic within the Gumelniţa communities through compositional analyses (PIXE, XRF) performed on a group of copper objects that originated from several sites belonging to Kodzhadermen–Gumelniţa–Karanovo VI (KGK VI) communities in southeast Romania (Chitila–Fermă, Măriuța, Sultana–Malu Roșu, Sărulești, and Vidra). All analyses were performed at the Horia Hulubei National Institute for Research & Development in Physics and Nuclear Engineering (Romania), and the investigated items belong to the collections of the Lower Danube Museum in Călărași and the Bucharest Municipality Museum. The resulting data were used as a starting point of a discussion on the possible prehistoric copper sources used by prehistoric people to manufacture the analyzed artifacts.

Keywords

• Northern Balkans
• Copper Age
• Gumelniţa
• copper artifacts
• elemental analyses