Secrets of a Silver Hoard

While excavating a palace at the site of Megiddo in northern Israel in the 1930s, a team of University of Chicago archaeologists uncovered a small ceramic jug containing 44 silver objects. The excavators thought that this silver hoard had been left on an earthen floor between 1850 and 1750 b.c., during the Middle Bronze Age. This would have made it at least 100 years older than the oldest silver hoard previously found in the southern Levant. After reexamining the hoard, archaeometallurgist Tzilla Eshel of the University of Haifa suspected the original archaeologists had misinterpreted its context. She compared the lead isotopes in the silver to those in artifacts from other Levantine silver hoards. The results indicated that the ratio of the isotopes in the Megiddo items is similar to silver objects found in the area that date to between 1550 and 1400 b.c., during the Late Bronze Age. 

                                                    

From: Archaeology Magazine

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