Britain's greatest treasure hoard reveals how goldsmiths fooled the Anglo-Saxon world

[theHandpuppet]

The Independent
Britain's greatest treasure hoard reveals how goldsmiths fooled the Anglo-Saxon world
by David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
Friday 17 October 2014

Scientists, examining Britain’s greatest Anglo-Saxon gold treasure collection, have discovered that it isn’t quite as golden as they thought.

Tests on the famous Staffordshire Anglo-Saxon treasure, a vast gold and silver hoard found by a metal detectorist five years ago, have now revealed that the 7th century Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths used sophisticated techniques to make 12-18 karat gold look like 21-23 karat material.

Scientific research, carried out over the past two years on behalf of Birmingham City and Stoke-on-Trent City councils, which jointly own the hoard, has revealed that the Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths had discovered an ingenious way of, metallurgically, dressing mutton up as a lamb. It appears that they deliberately used a weak acid solution – almost certainly ferric chloride – to remove silver and other non-gold impurities from the top few microns of the surfaces of gold artefacts, thus increasing the surfaces’ percentage gold content and therefore improving its appearance. This piece of Anglo-Saxon high tech deception turned the surfaces of relatively low karat, slightly greenish pale yellow gold/silver alloys into high karat, rich deep yellow, apparently high purity gold.

Archaeologists had never previously realised that Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths had developed such technology....

MORE at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/news/britains-greatest-treasure-hoard-reveals-how-goldsmiths-cheated-their-saxon-clients-9799977.html

[littlemissmartypants]

1. Ahhh, lovely chemistry.

And language. . .

metallurgically, dressing mutton up as a lamb

A delicious technique for any occasion.
The words roll off the tongue and paint a picture.

Divine.

Excellent read. Thanks for your post, theHandpuppet

~ Lmsp 🌻

[theHandpuppet]

2. "Dressing mutton up as lamb"

Yea, I loved that, too.