Non-destructive X-ray flourescence analysis of Early Bronze Age metal items from Kalinkaya-Toptaştepe: With critical remarks on the formerly applied electrochemical cleaning procedure

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Tezin Türü: Yüksek Lisans

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Mühendislik Fakültesi, Metalurji ve Malzeme Mühendisliği Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2011

Öğrenci: EVREN YİĞİT GENİŞ

Danışman: ALİ KALKANLI

Özet:

This thesis focuses on late Early Bronze Age metal objects from funeral context from the site Kalınkaya-Toptaştepe, dated to the late 4th and 3rd millennium BCE. The site yielded a large number of metal objects from EBA necropolis of the southern slope of Toptaştepe, offering an ideal closed assemblage for an archaeometrical analysis to reveal the metalworking technologies of an early small rural community of Central Anatolia. First archaeometrical analysis applied on these objects, however, revealed unexpectedly high amounts of Zinc, which turned out to be not an intentional alloy, but modern contamination due to the electrochemical cleaning, carried out in the 1970s. A second analysis has carried out after cleaning the metal objects with micro-sandblasting technique, to remove the artificial Zn contamination. The accumulated data provided us with important insights into the metal consumption and alloying traditions of a late EBA village community in Central Anatolia, showing the earliest conscious alloys were being applied in small hamlets of the EBA as well. It has been apparent that any pre-Iron Age metal object, revealing Zn in its chemical composition can not be considered as early brass, but clearly a result of modern, ill-advised cleaning application.