CANADA: Examination of a collection of the oldest gold artifacts in Ireland show they were made from gold imported from England, suggesting a gold-trading route existing as far back as the early Bronze Age, researchers say.
The gold likely came from Cornwall in the southwest of England, and the trade may have been going on as early as 2500 BC, say archaeologists at the University of Southampton.
The discovery is both unexpected and interesting, said study lead author Chris Standish, because there were rich and easily accessible gold deposits in existence locally in Ireland at the time.
“It is unlikely that knowledge of how to extract gold didn’t exist in Ireland, as we see large scale exploitation of other metals,” he says.
“It is more probable that an ‘exotic’ origin was cherished as a key property of gold and was an important reason behind why it was imported for production,” he suggests.
The archaeologists used an examination technique of laser-based mass spectrometry, allowing them to analyze the gold in 50 Bronze Age artifact held by the National Museum of Ireland and compare it to gold deposits located in a number of location in Ireland and England.
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