147 Recent Advances in Archaeological Geology (Posters)

Monday, 26 September 2016
9:00 AM - 6:30 PM
Exhibit Hall E/F

MERCURY AND SMALL-SCALE GOLD MINING AT ANCIENT SARDIS, TURKEY

Paper number: 147-1
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 9:00 AM – 6:30 PM

Authors

Abstract

Cinnabar was mined and retorted to produce mercury in ancient Turkey more than 8000 years ago. Both the Greeks and Romans mined cinnabar at Sizma (~6300 aC) and near Konya, an ancient 3 m2mercury retort, cut into marble, was found. Geologically, there are seven mercury districts in Turkey; however, production ended in the 1970s.

Modern uses for cinnabar and mercury are numerous; however, in the Byzantine world, cinnabar was used as a pigment (vermillion) and to produce mercury that was used for gilding or amalgamation of fine-grained alluvial gold. At Sardis, alluvial gold mining dates to ~700 aC and continues today, and, as recently as 1984, sluice concentrates at Sardis were amalgamated. Geology and availability of mercury, a mercury retort, regional Roman use of mercury for amalgamation, and the very fine-grained (~0.03 mm) alluvial gold at Sardis all indicate that amalgamation must be reconsidered as the ages-old mining technology that supplied alluvial gold to ancient Sardis’ refineries.

Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) geochemical studies in Colombia and Perú indicate that gold from alluvial sources may contain ~5000 ppm Hg sourced from cinnabar/mercury outcrops, underground coal fires, alluvial gold mining, or volcanic eruptions. However, modern amalgam (Hg+Au) in the gold pan contains >300,000 ppm Hg—this amalgam must be burned (refogado), as would have been done in the past, to volatilize the mercury, leaving end-product gold with only trace amounts of mercury. Prehispanic gold artifacts from museums in Bogotá and Lima typically contain <20 ppm Hg—consistent with a reduction in the mercury content during amalgam burning. Therefore, we are similarly using ICP to determine the metal content, particularly Pt and Hg, of end-product Byzantine gold to interpret the mining technology used at ancient Sardis.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 7

doi: 10.1130/abs/2016AM-276394

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